Life convict arrested after 14 years on the run in 2006 Gurugram murder case

Madhuban hails from Budhwari Kalan in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district and has more than a dozen criminal cases registered against him, including murder, loot and other heinous offences.

Fourteen years after evading capture while on a jumped bail, a 40-year-old convict, sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2006 murder of a well-known advocate in Gurugram, was arrested in Palwal on Wednesday, police said.

The accused who uses a single name, was traced to a farmhouse in Atoha village in Palwal.

The accused, Madhuban, who uses a single name, was traced to a farmhouse in Atoha village in Palwal, where he was working at the time of his arrest. The operation was carried out by a crime branch team led by inspector Narender Sharma after a three-month-long chase, police said.

According to investigators, Madhuban hails from Budhwari Kalan in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district and has more than a dozen criminal cases registered against him, including murder, loot and other heinous offences.

Police said Madhuban had murdered his employer Jagmal Thakran, a well-known advocate, inside his farmhouse in Gurugram on May 13, 2006, by brutally assaulting him with an iron rod. After killing him, he stuffed the body into a trunk and fled the farmhouse with gold jewellery and cash worth several lakh after loading them into a Maruti Suzuki Gypsy, investigators said.

A special police team was constituted following the murder and the accused was arrested after several days. He was later convicted and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment by a court on March 5, 2008. Police said Madhuban was a member of a criminal gang that was highly active in Rajasthan at the time and had sought employment at Thakran’s farmhouse with the intention of looting valuables to start his own gang.

The sessions court granted him regular bail in 2011, which was later cancelled by the Punjab and Haryana high court after Thakran’s family challenged the order. However, Madhuban neither surrendered nor could be traced for over a decade, police said.

Sandeep Turan, public relations officer of Gurugram police, said the accused repeatedly changed his identity to evade arrest. “He had changed his identity and kept working in farmhouses and companies located at secluded places in Delhi, Faridabad and other places in Haryana to avoid getting tracked or identified by anyone,” Turan said.

“He didn’t work anywhere for four to five months. As soon as anyone asked for identity documents from Madhuban, he used to immediately leave job and flee,” he added.

Police said the accused was produced before a city court on Wednesday and was sent to judicial custody.