Police claims Pallavi Purkayastha's killer had planned to escape to Pakistan

Mumbai: Sajjad Mughal, who jumped parole in March 2016 after he was convicted of the murder of city-based lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012, had allegedly planned to flee to Pakistan to hide but decided to stay back in Jammu & Kashmir because of his mother, according to the police.

A native of the Baramulla district, Mughal was arrested from near Sonmarg early on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday, the Mumbai crime branch handed him over to the Nashik police as he was lodged at the Nashik jail when he jumped parole.

According to the cops, Mughal’s brothers were opposed to his plan to flee as they had signed his parole papers and would have been held accountable for his flight. Later Mughal seemed to have reconciled himself to settling down in the state after marrying, but it did not work out. While in J&K, Mughal had also allegedly incurred the enmity of a few people and police suspect that he could have been planning to target them.

Mumbai DCP (crime) Dilip Sawant said, “The people of his village supported and helped him to him hide from the police, which is why officials took time to trace him. But his behaviour after conviction has not changed. After all, this is the same team which arrested him earlier and knew his behavioural traits before they caught him,” he said.

The police team, which comprised of few officials who had arrested him in the murder case, was in J&K for a week before they managed to nab him with the help of “local sources” that they had developed.

Mughal, who was a watchman at the building where Pallavi stayed, was found guilty of murder, molestation and criminal trespass, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014.