Hyderabad: For 14 years, the man living in the shadows of Malakpet believed he had successfully deleted his past.
Armed with a modified Aadhaar card and a slightly altered name, Vishnav Kishan Das, a man linked to 21 criminal cases including murder, thought he was no longer a 'rowdy sheeter,' but simply 'Vaishnav Ganesh Maharaj.'
On May 27, that carefully constructed mask finally fell.
An attempt to become a ghost
His history with the Sultan Bazar Police began in 1999, but he truly became a ghost in 2012.
After being arrested for a brutal murder in 2010 (Cr. No. 248/2010), he secured bail on May 2, 2012. The moment he walked out of jail, he vanished. He skipped court dates, ignored summons, and effectively became 'Out of View' (OV) for over a decade.
However, Kishan Das hadn't fled the city. Instead, he hid in plain sight. In a calculated move to deceive the digital-age police force, he wilfully modified his legal identity.
On his Aadhaar card and other essential documents, 'Kishan Das' was listed as 'Ganesh Maharaj.' By changing his name and assuming the persona of a 'Maharaj,' he successfully blinded the police's electronic surveillance and bypassed routine checks for 14 years.
When did the mask start to fall?
The breakthrough came when a special team from the Sultan Bazar Police Station, working under the direct supervision of the Sultan Bazar ACP and SHO G Naresh, refused to let the 2010 murder case turn into a cold file.
The team began an exhaustive hunt, piecing together fragments of old intelligence. Their persistence paid off when they received a 'credible tip' that a man matching the description of the long-lost fugitive was living in Malakpet under a different name.
The team didn't just find a fugitive; they uncovered a fraud. They realised that the 'Maharaj' of Malakpet was the same man who had been involved in heinous crimes across the Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda Commissionerates.
Hide-and-seek ends
When the police team moved in on Thursday, the 14-year-old game of hide-and-seek ended. Das was apprehended and taken back to the station where his criminal record first began 27 years ago.
The arrest has cleared a major hurdle for the judiciary. Das is a primary suspect in a Long Pending Case (LPC) for murder and has a history involving the Arms Act and attempted murder.
Beyond his original crimes, the police have now initiated a separate inquiry into how he managed to fraudulently modify his government-issued identity documents, a move that allowed him to remain a free man while the law searched for a person who, on paper, no longer existed.