Idrees Pasha was allegedly chased and killed by Kerehalli and associates after they waylaid his truck near Sathanur police station on 1 April.
Puneeth Kerehalli and his four associates were arrested in Rajasthan. (Supplied)
One of the four teams of the Ramanagara district police, who were on the look-out for the self-styled cow vigilante Puneeth Kerehalli and his associates, arrested all the accused near Banswara district in southern Rajasthan on Wednesday, 5 April.
Kerehalli and his associates have been on the run since the Sathanur police registered a case of murder of a 39-year-old cattle trader. The victim, Idrees Pasha, was allegedly chased and killed by Kerehalli and his associates after they waylaid Pasha’s truck near Santhemale circle near Sathanur police station in the wee hours of 1 April.
The Ramanagara district police stated that Puneeth Kerehalli — the prime accused — is the president of a far-right Hindutva outfit called Rashtra Rakshana Pade (National Security Army) and has around 11 cases registered against him.
The police team has identified Kerehalli’s four arrested associates as Gopi, Pawan Kumar, Pilling Ambigar, and Suresh Kumar. Among the four, Gopi is also a member of the Rashtra Rakshana Pade and Pawan Kumar is said to be a television reporter, the police stated.
According to the police team, the five were travelling in a Karnataka-registered Maruti Baleno, by-passing the Banswara district where the Rajasthan and Gujarat police had tightened security at all exit and entry points.
The Rajasthan police noticed the Karnataka-registered car and stopped them for questioning when they identified Puneeth Kerehalli. They then passed on the information to the Karnataka police team who were searching for them in Rajasthan.
In regards to Sathnur PS Cr No. 54/23, the death of Idris Pasha, the accused Puneeth Kerahalli and four others have been arrested by our team at Banaswara, Rajasthan.
We would like to thank the Rajasthan and Gujarat State Police for their help in nabbing all the accused.
— Ramanagara District Police (@spramanagara) April 5, 2023
“All the five arrested accused were produced before a court in Rajasthan from where transit warrants were obtained and they are being brought to Sathanur police station,” Superintendent of Police Karthik Reddy told South First.
Cattle trader Idrees Pasha (39) was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Ramanagar district’s Sathanur around 8:30 am on Saturday, 1 April. His body was found about 100 m from where the truck he was travelling in was waylaid. It was a stone’s throw away from the Sathanur police station.
It was after the locals informed the Sathanur police about the body that they rushed to the spot and identified him as Idrees Pasha, a resident of Sabdhariyabad Mohalla in Mandya city, the district headquarters of the eponymous district in Karnataka. He worked as a cattle trader, with his buying and selling taking place in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka.
Soon after the Sathanur police learnt about the death of Pasha on Saturday morning, they took a complaint from his brother, Yunus Pasha, based on which a case of murder was registered against Kerehalli and his associates on the same day.
Since then, Kerehalli and his associates have been absconding. The accused had switched off their mobile phones and escaped to Hubballi, then to Belagavi, before they entered Maharashtra, Gujarat, and finally Rajasthan where they were caught, police sources said.
However, on Tuesday, 4 April, Puneeth Kerehalli released a video of himself stating that he has not gone absconding, but that he was on his way to visit a temple.
This video had gone viral on social media, which sent the Ramanagara police into a tizzy. They intensified their search operation of tracking and tracing Kerehalli and his associates.
In the video, Kerehalli accuses Opposition leaders Siddaramaiah and HD Kumaraswamy for siding with “cow-killers”.
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