Updated on: 13th July 2023 2:08 PM IST | Mumbai
S S Nadar | news@debotimes.in

Bhausaheb Tijore was declared an absconder in 2021 after he failed to show up at court hearings. Last week, a person he was not on good terms with informed the police that he had reached his house in Ahmednagar.

It was a police constable’s decision to identify a person who was not on good terms with Bhausaheb Pawlas Tijore and then cultivate him as an informant that helped the Antop Hill police in Mumbai arrest Tijore, nearly 26 years after he was booked in a cheating and forgery case.

Tijore was booked on August 28, 1997, after a woman named Anita Randhive filed a complaint alleging that he had duped her of Rs 5 lakh on the pretext of providing her with a loan at a cheaper interest rate. On August 31, 1997, the Antop Hill police arrested Tijore and after initial police custody, he was remanded in jail custody. Subsequently, on September 17, 1997, a magistrate court granted him bail.

“Later, Tijore failed to show up at court hearings due to which he was declared an absconder in 2021 after which a non-bailable warrant was also issued against him by a magistrate court in Kurla,” a police official said.

“We were instructed to look for him but we could find only his Sion Koliwada address in our records. When we went there to check on him, we were informed that he no longer stays there and nobody knows him in the vicinity,” the official added.

The investigators then started looking for more documents related to the case and came across the address of Tijore’s Ahmednagar house. As the police did not want to go there and alert Tijore till they were sure about his presence, constable Vinod Bhosale reached out to the local police station. He managed to get the contact number of an office bearer of the local gram panchayat. “But nobody was willing to share any details on Tijore,” the official said.

The only information the investigators received was that Tijore stayed somewhere else and only visited the house twice a month. “Everyone was scared of him because he would get information through Right to Information and blackmail people there. Residents were scared that if they shared details about him, Tijore would target them,” the official added.

Bhosale then identified a person who was not on good terms with Tijore. “Tijore’s enemy was also not willing to share anything about him but the accused was harassing him so much that two years later, he agreed,” the official said.

In the afternoon on July 7, Bhosale received a call informing him that Tijore was in Ahmednagar and could leave the next day. The police officials immediately sought permission from their superiors, went to Ahmednagar in their private vehicle and caught Tijore inside his house on the morning of July 8.

“Initially, he tried to mislead us by claiming that he was not Tijore. But we found an identity card in his pockets through which he was identified,” senior police inspector Manoj Hegiste said.

Tijore was then brought to Mumbai and arrested.