On the run for six months, fugitive Punjab MLA Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra was arrested by the Patiala police in a late-night operation in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior district on Tuesday. He was sent to four-day police remand by a local court today.A team of the Patiala police took the AAP MLA from Sanaur to the Crime Investigating Agency in Patiala. From there, he was taken in heavy police security to the local court.“We need to know his exact whereabouts ever since his escape and the reasons that brought him back to India in case he had earlier escaped abroad,” said a senior police official.As the Patiala police remained tight-lipped about the investigations into the case, given the political utterances by the accused against AAP’s Delhi leaders in the recent past, the arrest assumes importance as it comes days before an AAP rally in Sanaur.Sources inside the Police Department say that the accused had fled to Australia and from there, he recently shifted to Dubai. “Someone close to him and his family was in touch with a political party and the MLA was likely to join it soon. Also, there were chances that his supporters would create some hiccups in the March 31 rally that was being planned,” he added.The arrest comes two days after another AAP MLA and former minister Laljit Bhullar was arrested in the suicide case of a government officer in Amritsar.Pathanmajra was declared a proclaimed offender by the court recently after an FIR was registered on serious charges, including rape, cheating and criminal intimidation, on a complaint by a Zirakpur-based woman. He has been on the run since September 2, 2025, and a lookout notice was also issued. In January, district officials and Punjab Police personnel had paid a surprise visit to the official residence of the rape-accused Sanaur MLA, making his family vacate the premises.The MLA dodged a CIA team from Patiala and had fled the house of his relative in Haryana’s Karnal moments after policemen arrived there to arrest him on the morning of September 2, 2025. While the police claimed that the MLA had fired at the police and escaped, the MLA had claimed that he “only hoodwinked the Patiala cops” and that “no shots were fired”.A day after his escape, the state government deputed the Punjab Anti-Gangster Task Force (AGTF) to arrest Pathanmajra. However, despite multiple raids, he continued to post social media posts criticising the Punjab Government.In social media posts and online interviews with some private channels, Pathanmajra had accused a “Delhi lobby” of orchestrating the crackdown against him. He appealed to fellow MLAs and state ministers to raise their voice against what he described as “attempts by external forces to destabilise the state”.