The Udaipur police has launched a manhunt for Sylvester Daniel, said to be a key witness in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case who escaped under the nose of the Gujarat police. However, late on Saturday night, top Baroda cop
Satish Sharma said Sylvester had been found and rearrested in Rajasthan.
Sylvester had slipped away from the Gujarat police on Friday night, allegedly while being escorted under guard to his residence in Udaipur to visit his ailing mother. “We have registered a case in this regard and several teams have been sent to trace the escaped person,” said Udaipur inspector-general of police Govind Gupta. He had been an inmate at Baroda Central Jail for the past year and a half and the Gujarat police had brought him to Udaipur on Friday to produce him before a local court.
“When he was being taken back to Gujarat, he managed to get the policemen escorting him to allow him to call on his mother. But he did not come out (from the house) and the police team from Gujarat found that he had escaped,” said Udaipur superintendent of police Alok Vashishtha. According to police sources, the Gujarat police took four hours to inform the Udaipur police about the incident and an FIR was lodged late Friday night.
“The Gujarat policemen said that he escaped on the way back, but that is not true. The police took him to his residence,” alleged a senior police officer. Sylvester, a resident of Udaipur, is alleged to be a key aide of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati and subsequently emerged as a witness in the alleged fake encounter cases.
According to sources, Sohrabuddin, Prajapati and Sylvester were close friends and used to seen together in Gujarat. Sylvester was arrested by the Gujarat ATS in 2005, after Sohrabuddin was killed in an alleged fake encounter.