Suspect in Panruti hooch tragedy held after 23 years

Cuddalore police arrest James Bond, suspect in Panruti hooch tragedy after 23 years on the run.

A special team of the Cuddalore district police arrested James Bond alias Thoja Anand, 58, one of the suspects in the Panruti hooch tragedy of 2001, which claimed 53 lives. He had evaded the police dragnet for the last 23 years and had settled in Tirupur district where he ran a grocery store.

According to police sources, the accused had supplied methanol to bootleggers who had supplied it to the victims. Of the 22 persons named accused in the case, as many as 12 died during the course of the trial, which is under way in the Cuddalore Additional Sessions Court and Judicial Magistrate Court in Panruti.

Of the remaining 10 accused, James Bond had gone absconding.

Subsequently, the manhunt for James Bond was abandoned following reports that he had died. Cuddalore District Superintendent of Police R. Rajaram perused the case records relating to the incident in the Panruti police station and constituted a special police team headed by Inspector Asokan.

“The team traced the his address to Chennai. However, they discovered that he had left for his hometown Thoothukudi. Though his family members said he was indeed alive, they claimed that they were not aware of his whereabouts. The calls made by the family members alerting the accused that the police were on his heels served as the lead. We traced the calls to Tirupur and arrested him. The accused was running a grocery store there,” said a police officer.

The accused was produced before a local court and remanded to custody.