Pune: After evading police for nearly 70 hours, the accused in the Swargate MSRTC bus depot rape case, Dattatray Gade, was arrested in the early hours of Friday (February 28) at 1:30 AM. He was found hiding in a canal in Kanad village, Shirur taluka, and was captured after an intensive search operation involving 100 police personnel, drones, and sniffer dogs.
The arrest was made possible after a local woman alerted the police when Gade approached her house at midnight asking for water. Realizing he had been spotted, he fled and hid in a canal pit, but police managed to track him down using drones.
How the Police Tracked Him Down
Police had received intelligence that Gade was hiding in a sugarcane field in Gunat village, Shirur. A massive search operation was launched on Thursday involving:
100 police personnel
Drones for aerial surveillance
Sniffer dogs to track his movements
Despite combing through 25 acres of farmland, police could not locate him on Thursday. As night fell and reports of leopard sightings emerged, the search was temporarily halted.
However, the accused, starving and desperate, attempted to get water from a house around 1 AM. The woman in the house immediately informed the police, forcing him to flee and hide in the canal again.
With police and villagers surrounding him, he was left with no escape route. Local villagers engaged him in conversation, urging him to surrender peacefully. Finally, at midnight, he gave himself up to the police.
Accused Had Planned to Commit Suicide
According to villagers, Gade had plans to commit suicide but was caught before he could take any drastic step. Following his arrest, he was immediately taken to Sassoon Hospital for a medical examination, and he is set to be presented in Shivajinagar Court at 11 AM today.