Mavelikkara: The police have arrested a murder convict who was on the run for the past 27 years.
The convict, Reji alias Achamma, went on the lam after the High Court of Kerala had sentenced her to life for murdering Mariyamma (61), wife of Pappachan.
The Mavelikkara police arrested Reji from Adivad in Pallarimangalam panchayat, where she had been living under a fake name, Mini Raju.
Mariyamma was found dead in her house at Mankuzhi on February 21, 1990, with a deep gash on her throat. Reji took Mariyamma's gold chain weighing 3.5 sovereigns and severed her earlobe to rob the earring.
The deceased woman's body bore about nine stab injuries. Initially, Reji's role was not suspected since Mariyamma had considered her as her own daughter. Further investigation landed Reji in police custody.
The Mavelikkara Additional District Sessions Court acquitted Reji on the benefit of the doubt in 1993. However, the prosecution went on appeal and the high court sentenced her to life imprisonment on September 11, 1996.
The woman absconded within hours after the high court pronounced the quantum of the sentence. Though the police launched a search, including in Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Andhra Pradesh, she could not be found.
For the past 27 years, she remained in hiding, like Sukumara Kurup in the Chacko murder case. Incidentally, the Chacko murder case, too, was registered by the Mavelikkara police.
Reji was arrested after the Mavelikkara Additional District Sessions Court-II judge KN Ajith Kumar issued a warrant 33 years after the murder.
Based on a directive from Alappuzha District Police Chief Chaitra Teresa John, a police team under Mavelikkara Inspector C Sreejith was formed. Senior civil police officers Unnikrishna Pillai, Mohammed Shafique, and Arun Bhaskar, too, were part of the team.
The initial information the team received did not lead them to Reji. It was then said that she was in Mumbai, Tamil Nadu or Gujarat. One version said she was in an orphanage. Her relatives, too, did not shed much light, since they have not seen Reji after she had gone on the run.
The police only got an old photograph of Reji from a newspaper report and the address she had provided at the time of her arrest.
Meanwhile, a rumour said she had died of COVID-19. The police collected the details of those who had died of COVID-19, specifically unidentified persons, and those vaccinated.
The probe team's first task was to find Reji's location when the high court had sentenced her. The team found that she had worked as a domestic help at Chungam and Aymanam in Kottayam before she went missing. The officers also learnt that she married a man from Tamil Nadu and went to that state.
A further probe led investigators to Adivad at Pallarimangalam in Ernakulam's Pothanikkadu, where Reji was living with her family under the adopted name, Mini Raju.
After the high court verdict, Reji worked as a domestic help at various places in Kottayam under the name Mini. Later she met a man from Thuckalay and married him in 1999. She was in Thuckalay for some time, before coming to Adivad, where she worked as a salesgirl in a textile showroom for five years.
Reji was arrested by a team led by Inspector C Sreejith, which also had Sub-Inspector Prahladan, senior civil police officers Biju Mohammed, Subhash NS, Sajumol, Unnikrishna Pillai, Mohammed Shafique, Arun Bhaskar, and civil police officer Bindu as its members.
She was produced before the Mavelikkara Additional District Sessions Court-II on Monday.