Indian rape suspect caught after 22 years

Police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa (also called Odisha) have arrested a man wanted in a notorious 1999 gang rape. The accused hid in plain sight for more than two decades - until a few days ago when his luck ran out.

When police approached Bibekananda Biswal's home last week in Pune district in the western state of Maharashtra, they say he tried to run away, reports the BBC.

"He saw the team coming and tried to escape. When he was caught, he told them, 'Take me away from here, I'll tell you everything'," senior Orissa police official Sudhanshu Sarangi told the BBC.

Bibekananda Biswal was among three men accused in the brutal gang rape of a 29-year-old woman on the night of 9 January 1999. He denies the allegations against him.

The other two men - Pradeep Kumar Sahu and Dhirendra Mohanty - were arrested, tried, convicted of rape and sentenced to life in jail. Sahu died in prison last year.

The woman was travelling from the state capital, Bhubaneswar, to its twin city Cuttack, with a journalist friend and her driver when their car was intercepted by three men travelling on a scooter.

The attackers forced them to drive at gunpoint to a secluded area where, according to court documents, she was assaulted multiple times over four hours. She and her friend were threatened and beaten up and their money and valuables were snatched.

The crime made headlines and shook the state not only for the brutality of the attack but also because of the serious allegations the survivor made against some important people, including the then Orissa chief minister JB Patnaik.

She accused him of trying to shield an official against whom she had lodged a complaint of attempted rape 18 months earlier. She alleged that the two had "a role" in her gang rape to "scare me into withdrawing my charges against the official".

Patnaik said her accusations were part of "a political conspiracy". A month later when the chief minister resigned, newspapers said the mishandling of the case was a major reason for his exit. A year later, the official was convicted of attempted rape and jailed for three years.

India's federal police - the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) - were called in to inquire into the gang rape case.

But Bibekananda Biswal - described in the court order as "the main accused, the mastermind" who had "raped and ravished the victim mercilessly" - had disappeared without a trace.

The case went cold, and the files lay gathering dust in a police station in Cuttack.