Thiruvananthapuram: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday arrested a proclaimed offender in the brutal murder of Shyamal Mandal, a student of the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram (CET). The accused, Durga Bahadur Chetri alias Deepak, a native of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, had been absconding since 2005.

According to the case, Mandal, who also hailed from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, was abducted and brutally murdered in October 2005.

In an official communiqué shared on X, the CBI said the accused had been living in Nagpur under a false identity, impersonating himself as Suraj B. Bhatt, son of Balbahadur Rambahadur Bhatt. Acting on intelligence inputs, a CBI team traced Chetri to Nagpur and arrested him on March 27.

Officials said Chetri had moved to Nagpur after committing the crime along with co-accused Mohammed Ali. 

Chetri and Ali had abducted the CET student and demanded a ransom of ₹20 lakh from his father. However, they later murdered him and packed his body in a sack. The police registered the case after the body was recovered near Thiruvallam in Thiruvananthapuram on October 23, 2005.

While the second accused was arrested and convicted, Chetri managed to evade arrest for 21 years. He will be produced before the jurisdictional court in Ernakulam, the CBI said.

In December 2008, the Kerala High Court had ordered the CBI to take over the probe, following which the agency re-registered the case on December 31, 2008. After a detailed investigation, CBI submitted the chargesheet against Chetri and Ali as the first and second accused in the case. In 2022, a CBI court had the second accused in the case. As Chetri remained elusive, the trial court declared him a Proclaimed Offender in the case.