Jailed strongman's son used Panama VPN to dodge UP police

VARANASI: Jailed muscleman Vijay Mishra’s son Vishnu used a Panama-based virtual private network (VPN) to interact with his associates and family members while he was on the run for two years before he was finally arrested from Pune on Sunday night.
After arresting him, the UP Special Task force (STF) is likely to reach Bhadohi by Tuesday morning after which he will be produced before a local court.
Vishnu was wanted in connection with several criminal cases, including that of gang rape, property-grabbing and land-grabbing. He was carrying a cash reward of Rs 1.75 lakh on his head.
“Formalities of taking Vishnu’s transit remand from a Pune court were completed after which the team of the Varanasi field unit of STF had left for Bhadohi on Monday afternoon,” confirmed STF officials on Monday.
“Tracing Vishnu was difficult as he had not been using a mobile phone for months and was communicating through a Panama-based virtual private network (VPN). India has no pact for information-sharing with the Panama government,” said the officials.
The officials added, “The STF team led by Dy SP Shailesh Pratap Singh and inspector Amit Srivastava arrested Vishnu from a flat in A-I wing of the Oxygen Valley Cooperative Housing Society in Pune. Vishnu, against whom six criminal cases were lodged since 2020, was booked under the Gangster Act in April. He had also released a video message from a hotel in Mumbai in 2021.”
The STF personnel said that except this video message, they had not found any clues regarding his hideouts where he took shelter as an absconder.
During initial interrogation after his arrest, Vishnu divulged that he initially stayed in Mumbai and after UP police traced his location, he fled to Hyderabad and kept changing his locations thereafter. Being a member of a leading hospitality company with a chain of resorts, he stayed in Goa and other places.
The officials said that with the help of his brother-in-law, he bought a flat in Oxygen Valley of Pune and was living there for the past one year.
Though Vishnu tried his best to keep the cops dodging by changing his hideouts and communicating through a VPN that doesn't reveal the identity of the user, the STF personnel succeeded in finding him by utilising its network of informers, the STF officials said.