Runaway rapist walks into Bangalore police trap

Bangalore : Convicted serial rapist and killer M. Jaishankar alias Shankar Friday walked into a trap laid by the Bangalore police through an informant, six days after his audacious escape from the central jail here, a police official said.

“The hardcore criminal fell into our trap after the informant lured him to come out of his hideout and walk to a spot on the pretext that a vehicle was waiting to take him to Tamil Nadu as he wished,” Bangalore Police Commissioner Raghavendra Auradkar told reporters here.

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Police suspected all along that the psychopath would not have gone afar undetected, as he had severely injured his hands and legs while scaling the prison’s 30-feet outer wall and jumping from a height to escape in darkness despite heavy rain Sunday.

“We had a hunch from day one that Shankar would have been cooling his heels somewhere in the outskirts and bidding time to recover and get away unnoticed. We learnt through our informant that he was desperate to board a lorry or any old vehicle going to Tamil Nadu from where he hails,” Auradkar said.

As a manhunt was launched to trace Shankar with Rs.5 lakh reward for credible information leading to his capture, the informant tipped off police that the fugitive was in a hideout at Kudlugate near Bommanahalli, 25 km from the city centre and 3km from the Parapanna Agrahara jail in the southern suburb, where he was lodged since May 2011.

“Using the informant as a decoy, we sent two men in an old vehicle to the spot around 12.30 p.m. and Shankar came and boarded it thinking he would be taken to Tamil Nadu via Hosur which is across the Karnataka border. But the vehicle was turned towards city and he was formally arrested by one of the four teams we had set up to trace him,” Auradkar said.

Admitting that Shankar’s escape was sensational and exposed the chinks in the security set-up, Auradkar said the convict would be produced before a local court Saturday for police custody to interrogate him and crack the case.

“As Shankar is a hardened criminal, he is not opening up. On asking where he first went from the jail and how he managed to hide so long, he said he went to a temple, some school in a nearby village and that he shifted places during late nights,” Auradkar said.

This was the second time Shankar escaped from a jail as he did from a Salem jail in Tamil Nadu in March 2011 and once from police custody at Coimbatore in the neighbouring state where he was facing trials for series of rapes, murders and dacoities.

Eleven central prison officials, including an assistant superintendent, two jailors, two head wardens and security guards were suspended for dereliction of duty leading to Shankar’s escape.

A truck driver by occupation once, Shankar was involved in 26 criminal cases over a decade in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.