Pune: Police on Thursday arrested a 50-year-old historysheeter from Kalburgi in Karnataka, wanted in a 2023 case of robbery, abduction, and rape in Lonavla. The accused, identified as Betab alias Shivam Anand Pawar, was on the run since the incident two years ago, while two of his associates were arrested earlier, said an officer of Pune Rural police. In 2023, Pawar and his aides allegedly abducted a 22-year-old woman from outside a railway station and held her captive in a house in Kusgaon near Lonavala for nearly three weeks, repeatedly sexually assaulting her. The Lonavla rural police, in an Oct 2023 raid, rescued the woman along with two minors found chained and confined in the same house. “The accused was produced before the court on Friday and they were sent to police custody for five days,” an officer said. According to the police, Pawar and his associates were involved in multiple incidents related to robbery involving tourists in Lonavla. He faces seven criminal cases across Karnataka, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, including four in Lonavla related to tourist robberies.
