Surat: Prevention of crime branch (PCB) sleuths arrested a 57-year-old murder convict 25 years after he jumped parole. Santosh Raul, who is from Ganjam district of Odisha, had jumped parole while serving a life term after being convicted in a murder case registered at Umra police station here. Surat police have launched ‘Operation Karavas’, to recapture fugitives. Police inspector R S Suvera told TOI: “Raul was booked for murder in 1993 in Surat and he was convicted in 1994. He was lodged in Vadodara jail to serve his term. He was released on parole on March 22, 2001, and did not report back to jail on April 6. He was absconding ever since. We got a tip-off that he had returned to Surat and was working at a textile unit in the Sayan area. Based on this information, we nabbed him and sent him back to Vadodara jail.” In 2001, Raul was not married. A few months after jumping parole, he married a woman near his native village. He then shifted to South India and lived in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. He did many odd jobs and kept shifting to evade the police. He also became a father and his son is 21 years old now. “Raul thought the police had forgotten him. A couple of years ago, he came back to Surat and started working in textile units. As our teams were hunting for him, we got a tip-off a week ago. We started a verification process, as we had an old picture of him. Once we were sure of his identity, we arrested him.”
