New Delhi: Delhi Police has arrested a 48-year-old man from Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu district for his alleged involvement in multiple cases of cheating and forgery linked to an organised bank fraud syndicate—nearly 18 years after he jumped bail and went absconding. The accused, Amit Nishchal, was nabbed from Manali, where he had been living under a fake identity and working as a hotel manager, police said. He was posing as one Sonu Chauhan and had managed to evade arrest for 18 years. Nishchal was earlier a resident of the Vishnu Garden area in Gurgaon, Haryana. He had been declared a proclaimed offender in connection with a 2001 case registered at DBG Road police station in Delhi under various sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to theft, cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. According to deputy commissioner of police (Crime) Harsh Indora, the Crime Branch received specific inputs that the accused was operating under an assumed identity. “Based on technical surveillance and field intelligence, the movement pattern and present location of the accused were ascertained in Manali,” the officer said. A police team was subsequently dispatched to Himachal Pradesh and arrested Nishchal from the place where he was hiding, Indora added. Investigations have revealed that Nishchal was also allegedly involved in a similar case of cheating, theft and forgery registered by Mumbai CID in 2001. Police said that during his judicial custody at a Mumbai jail, Nishchal came into contact with Om Prakash Singh, alias OP Singh, who was a notorious gangster at the time. In 2002, Nishchal was again arrested by Mumbai Police in a case registered at the Santa Cruz police station under IPC sections related to robbery and house-trespass. He later secured bail in the case but allegedly absconded, first shifting to Delhi and later relocating to Manali, where he adopted a false identity to avoid detection.
