An Ahmedabad district court Monday issued an arrest warrant against a murder accused who has disappeared after coming out of jail on temporary bail.
In August, Sabarmati Central Jail officials sent out a communication to several authorities, notifying them that Tarun Jinaraj had not reported back to jail and was absconding. Accused of killing his first wife in 2003, Jinaraj was on the run for 15 years before he was arrested in 2018.
The Gujarat High Court’s court of Justice Nirzar Desai granted two weeks’ temporary bail to Jinaraj in an order dated July 20. According to the prosecution, the temporary bail was sought for making financial arrangements and citing that his mother was old and alone. The court allowed him a temporary bail for two weeks from the date of his actual release on usual terms and conditions and on executing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with two local sureties of Rs 50,000. He was directed to surrender before the jail authority on completion of the temporary bail period, without fail.
The court had also ordered that if Jinaraj was to leave the territory of Gujarat, he should inform the concerned police station where he is going to stay in Karnataka as he belongs to Karnataka and shall mark presence before the nearest police station of his residence in Rajasthan twice in a week during the temporary bail period.
In May, the court of Justice Moxa Thaker refused to grant temporary bail, noting that his mother was receiving a pension of Rs 34,000 per month and also considering that he was arrested after a long time.
Jinaraj allegedly strangulated his wife Sajni on Valentine’s Day (February 14) in 2003, three months after their marriage, at their home in Ahmedabad and fled the city. He was caught in 2018 from Bengaluru, where he was found to have changed his identity and remarried, living in the city for the past six years with his second wife and two sons.
According to a police source, the Sabarmati central jail authorities on August 23 wrote to the Gujarat High Court registrar and the court concerned that granted the temporary bail, notifying that Jinaraj had absconded and violated the bail conditions.
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A copy of the communication was also sent to the Ranip police station, the jurisdiction under which Sabarmati Central Jail falls; the Sarkhej police station, where the original complaint was filed; Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch, which had investigated and cracked the case; Ahmedabad Special Operations Group (SOG) and the city police commissioner, according to a police official.
A police officer said, “Only if the jail authorities inform the concerned police jurisdiction can an offence be lodged against the accused for absconding.”
Jinaraj also faces a 2019 FIR at a police station in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal for allegedly using forged documents to prepare a forged passport with which he reportedly obtained a job in multinational companies and visited the United States several times.