ALLAHABAD: The main accused in the brutal murder of Dalit law student Dilip Saroj, Vijay Shankar Singh was arrested by sleuths of the crime branch on Wednesday from a bus stand in Sultanpur as he was getting down from a roadways bus.As per police reports, Singh is a native of Demrauna and was on his way to Sultanpur after staying for a short while in Lucknow.After his arrest from Sultanpur bus stand, the police brought him to Allahabad and claimed to have recovered the iron rod and bricks—which were used to attack the deceased student—after being led to the spot by Singh near the site of incident.SSP(Allahabad) Akash Kulhari said, “A five-member team of crime branch officials received a tip-off that the accused was travelling in a roadways bus from Lucknow to Sultanpur. Police cordoned off the area and managed to catch him at 7am in the morning.”The SSP said that all four accused in the murder, the waiter of the restaurant Munna Chauhan, driver of the vehicle in which the accused fled Ramdeen Maurya, a friend of the accused Gyan Prakash Awasthi as well as main accused had been arrested.SSP said Singh has also gone to the Colonelganj police station on February 10 morning along with his lawyer to get his case registered but the police had refused to register his complaint.“In the afternoon, he came to know that a case had been registered against him in the student’s death, following which he escaped to his native town.”Kulhari said that a criminal case under section 323, 504 and 506 of IPC with Koorebhar police station of Sultanpur was registered against the main accused, who is a travel ticket examiner and is posted at Ramnagar in Varanasi.SSP said, “On February 10 afternoon, Singh had escaped to his native town in Sultanpur and later changed locations in Faizabad, Lucknow and New Delhi.”SSP said that specially-constituted police teams had been monitoring the movement of the main accused and nabbed him at Sulatanpur bus stand when he returned from Lucknow. Singh had taken shelter at a relative’s house in Faizabad for a day before moving to Delhi.On February 9, Singh and his aides brutally attacked Saoj after an altercation outside a restaurant near Laxmi Talkies in Old Katra area. After the accused fled, the restaurant’s owner rushed Saroj to the Swaroop Rani Nehru hospital where the 26-year-old student slipped into a coma. He was later shifted to a private hospital where he succumbed to his injuries on Sunday morning .Police would be invoking National Security Act (NSA) against the four accused. The SSP also clarified that Singh had no link or contact with any sitting or former MLA or MP, as had been rumoured.SSP also said “During initial interrogation, the accused told the police that he had himself informed the police about the clash on the intervening night of February 9 and 10. The accused said that he had been under the influence of liquor and admitted that he lost his cool after he was roughed up by the rival camp with chairs and sticks.”Kulhari said that the police was verifying Singh’s statement and that Dilip’s post mortem report showed that he had not consumed liquor on the night of the incident.

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