Pratibhanand continues to elude cops

Even after arrest of three main ‘contract killers’ in the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Deepak Bhardwaj murder case, the investigators are yet to decipher the motive behind the murder as well the identity of the mastermind.

The investigators are unable to locate one of the main suspects – Swami Partibhanand, police said, as he managed to escape the police teams chasing him, repeatedly.
‘Pratibhanand has changed at least seven cities across various states to evade police every time since the day his name came out behind the shootout,” said a senior police officer.
Partibhanand’s name popped up after killers Purushottam Rana, Sunil Mann and Amit, who were arrested last week in the Capital, during interrogation, said that they received a call from a person named Rakesh Malik, a commercial pilot, who told them that Partibhanand had given him the contract to kill Bhardwaj.

The officer said that they have been chasing Partibhanand since when he was in Nanded in Maharashtra and thereafter fled to Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. He then subsequently went to Haridwar in Uttrakhand and than to Indore . From Indore he fled to Bengaluru in Karnataka, then Patna in Bihar and is now in Kolkata,” said the officer. “Two days ago he was seen at Bihar’s Patna. Partibhanand, who usually wears saffron robes, was spotted wearing a pant and shirt and spent a day in Patna. But before our team reached, he managed to escape,” said the officer.

The investigators said that the contract killing deal was made over Rs 3 crore out of which Pratibhanand might have got Rs 2 crore from the main conspirator.

Pratibhanand wanted to purchase land to start his own ashram. For this, he needed money, and for the last 18 months, he was searching for land in Haridawar, Karnal and Solan. He also went to the Kumbh Mela, met several priests and took a look at closed ashram which he wanted to buy.