Fifteen hours after he dodged a heavy posse of police and escaped from a government hospital in Vijayawada on Sunday night, Congress MP Lagadapati Rajagopal surfaced in the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) under equally dramatic circumstances on Monday afternoon.

Dressed in dark trousers and a pullover, Lagadapati Rajagopal ran into the government-run super-speciality hospital from the rear gate as dozens of policemen and a large media contingent were waiting for him at the main entrance. He managed to escape everyone’s attention by travelling to NIMS in an auto-rickshaw and running into the hospital where he was admitted.