Police knew about CS Karnan's hiding place in Coimbatore for three days

Chennai: Absconding former Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan was on Tuesday night arrested by the West Bengal CID from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, more than a month after the Supreme Court sentenced him to six months imprisonment for contempt of court.

According to news agency IANS, the police team searching for 62-year-old Karnan, who retired from service on June 12, knew about his hiding place in Coimbatore for three days before moving in to arrest him.

"We knew about his (Karnan`s) whereabouts three days back. We were tracking phone calls of people close to him and we also have our own sources," West Bengal Director General of Police Raj Kanojia told IANS here.

Kanojia spoke at the Chennai airport before boarding a flight to Kolkata.

According to him, this was a unique case he had handled in his entire service and "maybe no other police officer will be handling such a case in a long time to come".

"Tracking Karnan was difficult. It was a difficult case," Kanojia said.

Karnan, who was sentenced to six months imprisonment by the Supreme Court for contempt but was untraceable, was arrested at around 6.45 pm from a private resort at Malumichampatti in Coimbatore on Tuesday. 

Karnan was eluding arrest for more than a month.

Three police teams from Kolkata were camping in Coimbatore, around 550 km from Chennai, for the past three days and traced Karnan on the basis of his mobile phone calls.

The police in Tamil Nadu gave the technical support to trace his whereabouts, officials in Coimbatore said.