Ranchi: Police will reward one person who led them to Shiekh Bilal, the key accused in the brutal murder of Sufia Parveen under the Ormanjhi police station area this month. Her decapitated, naked body was found on January 3. Bilal was nabbed after police received a tip-off that he has been sighted in Kutte area under Silli police station.
Police cordoned off the area and caught Bilal even as he was trying to escape in an auto. Ranchi SSP Surindra Jha said, “The person helped us nab Bilal, who was hiding after the crime. We have a fund at the district level for announcing rewards. In case the amount required is big, district officials will have to request the higher authorities to meet the shortfall.”
Earlier, police had announced Rs 5 lakh for any clue regarding the identity of the dead woman and the culprits. Later, an amount of Rs 1 lakh was declared for any information on Bilal. While the district police confirmed the decision to give Rs 1 lakh as reward to the person who tracked Bilal and helped police arrest him, they remained tight-lipped about the reward worth Rs 5 lakh announced for identification of the headless body. “These rewards are given from the SS Fund and the department is not going to divulge details,” said ADG Navin Singh.
The recovery of the headless body was a blind case for police, which could not make a headway in the case for several days. Unable to find any lead, a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh was announced, but it did not yield the desired results.
A police offer said that in the initial days, police worked from the top to reach the bottom of the crime. “It was us who approached Sufia’s family to ascertain whether the body was that of their daughter.” Asked on the number of cases in recent years in which a reward had to be announced, Jha said it is not uncommon to announce rewards in crime cases that pose difficult hurdles for police.
It may be stated here that Jharkhand Police have sought information from the people regarding extremists of CPI (Maoist) and the People’s Liberation Front of India with assurance that a reward announced by state government on the LWE members would be handed over to the person providing authentic information.