A rape accused, who was on the run for the past two years, was arrested from a vaccination centre in Odisha’s Balangir district on Saturday.
Moments before the accused, identified as Arun Podha, registered for vaccination at Bhainsar village under the Patnagarh police limit, he was taken into custody.
“Soon after a woman in the same village accused Podha of sexually assaulting her in March 2019, he had fled the village and was never seen since then. The accused was arrested while he was standing in a queue for vaccination,” said Jyotirmaya Bhukta, Sub-Divisional Police Officer of Patnagarh.
Mr. Podha, 24, had been working in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu to evade arrest. Mr. Bhukta said the accused was confident that “nothing would happen” to him as his family members made attempts to influence the victim.
Acting on a tip-off, local police went to vaccination centre and arrested him. Police forwarded him to court after conducting a medical examination.
“The decision to vaccinate him would be taken up at a later stage since he failed to get inoculated,” said the police.
Meanwhile, in the southern district of Malkangiri, the police arrested four fake doctors who were active in Chitrakonda block. During the lockdown, these quacks were claiming to provide health services at the doorstep in the tribal dominated Swabhiman area. Three of them were from West Bengal. The police seized medicines from them.
