A former Army captain, who had been absconding for around four years after being convicted of killing his wife, has been arrested in Pandhurna district of Madhya Pradesh. The arrest was made on Saturday during a joint operation carried out by local police with assistance from the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID).
The accused, Sandeep Tomar, was convicted for the murder of his wife Shweta Singh in 2013 at the Abohar cantonment in Punjab, only months after their marriage. The case was initially projected as a suicide, but forensic examination later confirmed that she had been strangled. A trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2014, after which Tomar was dismissed from service.
Tomar served around five years in prison before being granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2019 while his appeal was pending. However, after the High Court upheld his life sentence in September 2022, he didn’t surrender before authorities and went into hiding.
During the period he remained absconding, Tomar reportedly lived under a fake identity and shifted between several locations, including Zirakpur, Odisha and Bengaluru, before finally settling in Pandhurna. Police said he worked as a real estate agent for some time and later took up employment as a manager at a juice factory. Officials also revealed that he had remarried while on the run.
Despite efforts to conceal his identity, investigating officers eventually traced him through financial transactions connected to his original identity. Police said Tomar used his original PAN card to open a bank account, which raised suspicion during routine verification. The account reflected regular salary deposits from a company based in Madhya Pradesh.
The crucial development came when the same bank account was used to book an LPG cylinder refill. Officials tracked the delivery address through the gas agency and matched it with mobile tower location data, which confirmed his presence in Pandhurna.
After verifying his location, police coordinated with local authorities and arrested him from his residence. He was later brought to Punjab on transit remand, produced before a court and subsequently sent to judicial custody in Abohar on March 28.
Police said the arrest marks the end of a long manhunt that intensified earlier this year after the High Court sought an updated status report from Punjab Police regarding the absconding convict.
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