LPG refill ends fugitive ex-Captain’s 4-year run

Fazilka: Convicted wife-killer Sandeep Tomar, a sacked Army Captain, survived four years as a fugitive under a fake name, but his luck finally evaporated when a routine payment for a cooking-gas cylinder gave away his secret location in Madhya Pradesh to national intelligence.Sandeep Tomar, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2013 strangulation of his wife, was traced by Punjab Police after a digital "trap" set by the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) flagged his financial activity. Tomar, a former officer dismissed from service following his conviction, went underground in Sept 2022 after the Punjab and Haryana high court upheld his life sentence. He had previously been granted bail in 2019 while his appeal was pending.During his years on the run, Tomar adopted a false identity to evade a nationwide manhunt, traversing several states to mask his location, working as a real-estate agent in Zirakpur, moving through southern and eastern hubs of Bengaluru and Odisha to avoid detection, and settling in Pandhurna, Madhya Pradesh, where he worked as a manager at a juice factory and reportedly remarried under his assumed name.The Digital FootprintDespite his efforts to live "off the grid", Tomar was undone by two critical administrative errors. The special investigation team (SIT) collaborated with NATGRID to monitor financial records linked to his original identification documents. The breakthrough occurred when Tomar used his original Permanent Account Number (PAN) to open a salary bank account at his new place of employment. The move triggered an automatic alert within the national intelligence database.Investigators monitored the account, observing regular monthly salary deposits from a company in Madhya Pradesh. The final confirmation of his exact location came when Tomar used the flagged bank account to pay for a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder refill.Arrest and ExtraditionUsing records from the gas agency and mobile tower data linked to the bank account, Fazilka police pinpointed Tomar's house in Pandhurna. Local authorities in Madhya Pradesh executed the arrest on Saturday. Tomar was returned to Punjab on transit remand and was remanded in judicial custody at Abohar on March 28. It was in 2013 at the Abohar cantonment that Tomar had murdered his wife of five months, Shweta Singh. Even though he originally claimed the death was a suicide, forensic experts later proved Shweta had been strangled.MSID:: 129926890 413 |