An Interpol Blue Corner notice issued at the instance of the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) played a key role in the arrest of Jagadish Padmanabhan alias Jaga, 42, an accused in a real estate-linked murder in Bengaluru. A close aide of Karnataka BJP MLA Byrathi Basavaraj, Jaga was arrested at the New Delhi airport on Tuesday.
Jaga, who had fled Bengaluru shortly after the July 15 murder of real estate operator V G Shivaprakash alias Bikla Shiva, 44, was identified at an airport in Thailand as a wanted accused in India on the basis of the Interpol notice, CID sources said.
CID police officers brought Jaga to Bengaluru on Tuesday afternoon, following which he was remanded to 10 days of police custody by a magistrate. The police have recovered a mobile phone from him.
Jaga is accused of orchestrating Shiva’s murder over a dispute on a 1.5-acre property in Kithaganur in east Bengaluru. Basavaraj, the MLA from K R Pura, is also named as an accused in the murder case, where 17 people, including Jaga, have been arrested.
Basavaraj was earlier questioned on two occasions by the Bengaluru police over the murder based on statements by Shiva regarding a property dispute before his murder. Shiva, who also had a dubious record of involvement in property frauds, had complained to the police and higher authorities in February about receiving threats from Jaga and his gang.
Jaga, who has a criminal history in Bengaluru, was seen fleeing his apartment block in an Audi car within 30 minutes of the murder. He is alleged to have flown to the UAE from Chennai on July 18.
Sources said that Jaga flew from Dubai to Indonesia and later Sri Lanka, where he stayed for nearly a month. The CID police last month obtained an Interpol Blue Corner notice for information on Jaga’s location and also got a lookout circular issued at airports in India.
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Jaga flew from Sri Lanka to Thailand this week, and officials at the Bangkok airport did not allow him entry into Thailand after a passport scan revealed the existence of an Interpol Blue Corner notice for the crime of manslaughter in India.
Thai authorities sent Jaga back to Sri Lanka, where immigration officials, puzzled by his deportation from Bangkok, checked his passport credentials and found out about the Interpol notice.
“Since there was a lookout circular issued at airports in India, the CID police in Karnataka were alerted to the arrival of the accused in Delhi. A CID team reached Delhi to arrest and bring him back on Tuesday,” a police source said.
The CID probe in the case has revealed that the conspiracy for Shiva’s murder was hatched by Jaga and others as early as March this year, when one of the 17 arrested accused was assigned the task of keeping tabs on Shiva’s movements.
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Jaga’s arrest is significant as he was directly involved in the property dispute with Shiva and is alleged to have threatened him on a couple of occasions. Shiva and Jaga were locked in a dispute where they both claimed to have been given legal rights over 1.5 acres of property valued at nearly ₹ 40 crore by two different claimants to the land.
Jaga and another “former gangster”, who is an associate of Basavaraj, are suspected to have been fronting the BJP MLA’s property ambitions for several years. Basavaraj was named in the murder FIR on the basis of a complaint by Shiva’s mother and based on his previous complaints.
The CID has invoked the provisions of the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act, 2000, in the murder case.
The police have arrested 17 people in the murder case. Jaga’s alleged henchmen, Kiran K, 34, and Vimal Raj, 31, and their associates, Pradeep K, 27, Madan R, 27, Samuel V, 24, Arun Temu, 25, Naveen K, 24, have been arrested for hatching the conspiracy to execute the murder. Five people hired for the murder from the Kolar region of Karnataka have also been arrested.
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Basavaraj was questioned even as the Karnataka High Court provided protection from arrest to the MLA following a petition for quashing of the case.