Bhubaneswar: A life convict who had been absconding for more than nine years after jumping furlough from Circle Jail, Choudwar, has been arrested from Punjab following a sustained interstate operation by the Commissionerate Police, officials said on Tuesday.
The accused, identified as Sajit Khan, was serving a life sentence in a 2008 murder case under Jagatpur police station in Cuttack. He was granted 14 days’ furlough from March 7 to March 20, 2017, but failed to surrender to prison authorities on March 21 and remained at large thereafter. A case regarding his absconding was registered at Jagatpur Police Station on December 25, 2025, under relevant provisions of the IPC and the Prisons Act, 1894.
According to police, Sajit Khan was convicted in 2010 by the Ad hoc Additional Sessions Judge, Fast Track Court-I, Cuttack, for the murder of a woman in Bhairpur village in 2008. The case also involved allegations of an attempted sexual assault on the victim’s elder sister, who was the sole eyewitness. He was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for life and had been lodged in Circle Jail, Choudwar, until his release on furlough.
During the years on the run, the convict allegedly assumed a false identity as “Fayaz Khan” after preparing forged identity documents and settled in Amritsar’s Sudarshan Nagar. Police said he worked as a bedsheet hawker, married locally and started a family while maintaining discreet contact with relatives in Cuttack.
Investigators combined human intelligence with technical surveillance, analysing the mobile phone records of the convict’s relatives. With assistance from the Cyber Cell and local informants, police traced his location to Amritsar. A team led by the investigating officer reached Punjab on June 23 and, after two days of extensive searches with assistance from the Amritsar Police Commissionerate and members of the Odia community, identified and apprehended the accused.
The accused was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Amritsar, on June 27, which granted a four-day transit remand. He has since been brought back to Odisha and was produced before the court in Cuttack on Tuesday.
Police said the arrest highlighted effective interstate coordination, technology-driven investigation and sustained field operations in tracking down long-absconding offenders.
