VADODARA: Amit Katara, the prime accused in the murder of a
Jhalod municipality councillor Hiren Patel on September 27, was arrested on Thursday evening. Amit is the younger brother of Jhalod Congress MLA Bhavesh Katara and son of former MP Babu Katara.
Patel had played a key role in engineering defections in the Jhalod municipality to ensure that Amit’s wife who had been elected as the president lost her seat.
This political rivalry is believed to be the root cause of the murder of Patel.
The local crime branch (LCB) of the Dahod district police caught Amit from his uncle’s house in Chitrodiya village on Thursday evening.
Assistant superintendent of police, Shefali Barwal said he was arrested after testing negative for
Covid.
Patel was run over by a light commercial vehicle near Jhalod when he was on his morning walk. Hs family had alleged that it was not an accident and that he had been receiving threats earlier.
Investigations and
CCTV footage revealed that Patel had been murdered by deliberately ramming the vehicle into him. It came to light that a contract had been given to murder Patel and an accused in the Godhra Sabarmati Express carnage case, Irfan Pada, had accepted the contract.
Pada and other accused were arrested and interrogated in connection with the offence.
Pada revealed the name of one Imran Gudala from Jhalod, who is a close aide of Amit. Gudala was held from Mewat in Haryana by the
Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). Ahmedabad crime branch had also joined the investigation in the high-profile case.