In a significant breakthrough, the Paradip police on Sunday arrested Ashok Bihari, a notorious criminal and one of the main accused in the Paradip Seaways Shipping and logistics limited general manager Mahendra Swain murder case, from Kolkata.
Sources said Ashok Bihari alias Kadir Khan was arrested from his hideout in a Howrah slum. The police would produce him in a local court and bring him to Odisha on a transit remand.
Bihari was one of the main accused in the conspiracy behind the brazen broad daylight murder of Swain over alleged stevedoring business rivalry in the Paradip Port.
Miscreants had bombed Swain’s Scorpio vehicle, and when he tried to
escape on foot, the assailants had shot him from pointblank range at Madhuban in the port town when he was on his way to his office on October 26, 2016.
Ashok Bihari’s arrest is said to be important as he had hired the Supari killers on the direction of another accused Rakesh Choubey of Jharkhand, who is also behind bars in connection with the case.
It is alleged that Bihari was also involved in a number of other cases in Odisha and had gone underground after the murder of the Seaways GM.
A special police team was tracking the movement of Bihari, and eventually the surveillance paid off.