MUMBAI: The police just got the licence to fly; the government has issued a GR( general rule) recently authorizing the city police commissioner to sanction immediate funds for crime branch officers’ airfare after they said it’s no use chasing runaway criminals on a train.

The government issued the GR on August 4, had already paid dividends. A crime branch unit-9 team flew to Delhi to track one of the Khar senior citizen’s killers and nabbed him after he got down from a train.

Earlier, there was informal practice among the police force, to request the victims to fund the police team’s travel expenses in case they want to ensure quick arrest of the escaped accused.

The police complaint to the government about the issue stating that if they take the next train after a criminal has already fled the city it then becomes extremely difficult to trace them. The criminals mostly travel to their hometowns, villages or relatives after committing the crimes.

Earlier the policemen’s flight request proposal would go to home department to get flying approval on government fund which would take several weeks or months. But the new GR authorized the city police commissioner to sanctioned money on request of the crime branch officers immediately to fly other states and city. The Khar murder case was fist instances where the crime branch managed to arrest a killer because they reached his destination before him.

“Our team has the train details a killer and they requested about the urgency to reach Mathura. We discussed the issue with the commissioner and he immediately gave his sanction to fly to Delhi. Out team succeeded to arrest the accused at the railway station. It will be very helpful for us in future also to nab the run away criminals” said KMM Prasanna, additional commissioner of police (crime).

On Sunday night, the two accused, Asif Khan, 20, and Nazim Khan, 18, had killed a 69-year-old Mahesh Bafna, at his godown in Khar (West). Asif was key murder accused and caught a train for Mathura on next morning. During the murder investigation, the police learnt that Asif was the last person who had communicated with Bafna over the phone. The Khar police had registered the murder case for investigation and the crime branch unit-9 was conducting parallel investigation.

The investigators learnt about Asif’s train details. A Khar police team caught next available train for Mathura and decided to visit Asif’s native place in Aligarh. However they were not sure if he was heading to his native place.

The unit-9 officer decided to fly there along with person to identify him. They suspected that once the accused walked out of the railway station, it would be difficult for them to trace him. The crime branch team landed at the Delhi airport from where they travelled to Mathura station in a vehicle. They caught Asif when he got down from the train at the station. They interrogated him and then arrested his associate, Nazim, from a Bandra slum.

