For one entire week, a Crime Branch team dressed up as livestock traders, travelled through countless villages across three states, kept track on the livestock markets and spread rumours about cheap cattle — all of it to ensure that a pig trader comes to them to buy livestock. The pig trader, police team said, was a history-sheeter with over 12 criminal cases against him since 1985, and they were tasked with tracking him down. In the last 32 years, Kunduswamy was named in over a dozen criminal cases. After making his initial foray as a bootlegger, Kunduswamy eventually branched out into several petty criminal activities until the day he murdered a close relative in 2016. Since then, he was on the run — reportedly leading a nomadic life. He then took to livestock trading and kept moving around Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. But every time police got an input about his whereabouts and reached the spot, they would find that he had vanished. “We missed catching him from Alwar, Palwal, Sawai Madhopur,” said an officer familiar with the investigation. Last week, the Crime Branch team of seven officers, under the guidance of ACP Pankaj Singh and headed by Inspector Jatan Singh, combed several villages across the three states, speaking to locals, coordinating with the panchayat heads and keeping a track of the sale of pigs. “Kunduswamy had taken to trading pigs. So we had to keep an eye out on the animal market. That was the only way we could get clues about his movements,” said the officer. The team, dressed in Rajasthani attire, arrested Kunduswamy from Sawai Madhopur village after an informer tracked him down. During questioning, he admitted about his involvement in the murder in 2016. Kunduswamy, along with his son and several associates, had assaulted a family with knives, bamboo sticks. While some sustained severe injuries, one of them, Shravan Singh, succumbed. For all the latest Delhi News, download Indian Express App

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