Tumakuru: A month-long, high-stakes game of hide-and-seek in the dense jungles of Pavagada in Tumakuru ended late Tuesday night when police tapped into the one thing a local rowdy-sheeter couldn’t live without: his late-night feast of chicken and alcohol.Venkatesh, alias Kanikalabande Venkatesh, a 45-year-old habitual offender facing over two dozen criminal charges, was arrested by Tumakuru police while sitting near a boulder in the woods of Kadamalakunte, enjoying his liquor and chicken dinner.For weeks, he had kept law enforcement on edge by attempting to masquerade as a Naxal to settle personal scores and extort locals. In the first week of Aug, Venkatesh fixed a crude bomb to an electric borewell motor on the agricultural field of a friend-turned-rival. Venkatesh publicly framed the blast as “Naxal activity.” On Sept 9, he pasted handbills on another local farmer’s wall in the name of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People’s War, demanding Rs 5 lakh.Local associates helped fuel the panic by spreading rumours that Venkatesh was in direct contact with Naxal outfits in Andhra Pradesh and Assam, urging villagers to seek his intervention for local disputes. While Venkatesh prided himself on his “pseudo-Naxal” lifestyle — frequently hiding out deep inside the jungle for days at a time — he had one major vulnerability.When cops visited his wife, Savitri, a gram panchayat member, she said her husband had vanished in the jungle and even she had not seen his face for over a month. Venkatesh’s son works as an assistant in a car showroom while his elder daughter lives with her farmer-husband in a neighbouring taluk.Venkatesh never used a mobile phone, and this hobbled police investigation. No one knew where he was. Fanning out across the jungles, police combed the area and used drones. But all in vain.The food trail trapAfter exhausting the standard leads, Tumakuru police changed tactics. Recognising that Venkatesh depended on local couriers for survival, investigators discreetly tracked down his supply network instead of hunting him in the forest.Without raising suspicion, officers tailed a courier tasked with carrying cooked chicken and alcohol into the woods. Late Tuesday night, police quietly closed in on Venkatesh’s campsite, apprehending the rowdy-sheeter mid-meal near a large boulder and ending his month-long evasion.ADGP (law and order) R Hitendra confirmed that the accused was not a Naxal. “Instead, he faces 12 criminal cases, including murder and dacoity. He, in the name of a Maoist, had tried to extort Rs 5 lakh from a fellow agriculturist in the village. His act of setting off a crude bomb on a neighbour’s field was on account of personal rivalry. But yes, he made our 150-plus police team work hard for one month. The police team had used drones to get a clue about Venkatesh, who hid in the forest,” he said, adding: “We knew he was not a Naxal. But catching him was a necessity to reveal to villagers what he really was.”
