Former member of Parliament of the Rashtriya Janata Dal Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, who has been evading arrest for more than three months, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation from a private hospital in Gurgaon in the outskirts of the capital in connection with the murder of a former member of legislative assembly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) 12 years ago.
A CBI spokesperson said that Yadav was arrested on Sunday night with the active co-operation of the Gurgaon police.
A four-time Lok Sabha MP, Yadav was sentenced to life imprisonment along with two others, Rajan Tiwari and Anil Kumar Yadav on February 14, 2008, for the murder of MLA Ajit Sarkar.
He was produced in Gurgaon court which granted transit remand for producing him before the competent Court at Patna, the spokesperson said.
Yadav's arrest was imminent after the Supreme Court struck down his bail order issued by the Patna high court and directed him to surrender forthwith.
The apex court Bench was furious with the Patna high court for granting bail to Yadav despite its 2007 direction that no bail should be granted to him by any court in the country.
The CBI had approached the apex court on March 26 challenging the Patna high court's February 18, 2009, order granting bail to Yadav who is undergoing life imprisonment in the murder case.
Special CBI judge B M Srivastava had on February 14, 2008, pronounced Yadav, former independent MLA Rajan Tiwari and Anil Yadav guilty of the murder of Sarkar and awarded them jail terms for life.
The case was taken over by the CBI on the request of the Bihar government.
Yadav, according to the agency, had political rivalry with Sarkar due to which he hatched a conspiracy with co-accused Choudhary alias Mamaji, Tiwari, Amar Yadav and Anil Yadav to eliminate Sarkar.
Choudhary, Tiwari, Amar and Anil Ajit Sarkar had on June 14, 1998, shot him dead.
Sarkar, who had a running feud with Yadav over issues relating to farm labourers, along with his driver Harendra Sharma and party worker Ashfaqur Rehman, was gunned down at Subhas Nagar in Purnea town on June 14, 1998.
The case was initially registered by local police and they had chargesheeted five people -- Jawahar Yadav, Divakar Yadav, Paapu Dev, Abdul Sattar and Bipin Choudhary alias Bipin Singh. However, all of them had been later set free by the court after being convinced that they had been framed in the case.
The trial in the case began on August 2, 2002, and concluded on February 4, 2009.
A total of 61 witnesses were presented by the prosecution, 23 of whom turned hostile and 27 deposed for the defence.
