Baba Siddique killing: Nabbed after 27-day search, shooter shows ‘no remorse’

Mumbai: Shivkumar Gautam, the alleged main shooter in the murder of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Baba Siddique, was arrested with his four associates near the Indo-Nepal border on Sunday after a 27-day search, officers from the Mumbai police crime branch told HT on Monday. Educated till class 7, Gautam does not have any remorse for killing the former minister because Anmol Bishnoi, brother of incarcerated gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, had brain-washed him and told him that the act would be good for God as well as the society, said police sources.
During his interrogation following the arrest, Gautam told police that he and two other shooters, Dharmaraj Kashyap and Gurmail Singh, had waited outside Siddique’s residence in Bandra West and Zeeshan Siddique’s office in Bandra East on alternate days for nearly a month till they eliminated the NCP leader on October 12. Gautam fled to his village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich soon after the murder via Thane, Pune and Lucknow. He also destroyed his old mobile phone and sim card and took up residence in a hut, with his four friends supplying food and other essentials, in a bid to escape arrest, he told the police.
Meanwhile, a Mumbai crime branch team comprising assistant police inspector Amol Mali, sub inspector Swapnil Kale, constable Vikash Chavan and two other constables visited his village in a bid to locate and nab him. The team secretly collected information regarding 50 people in the village who knew him personally. After removing the names of senior citizens and women from the list, the number reduced till 10, said deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Datta Nalawade.
“We scrutinised the call data records of these 10 persons and spoke to some locals, which confirmed that only four persons were close friends of the accused,” he said. The four friends included shooter Dharmaraj Kashyap’s brother Anurag Kashyap, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Akash Shrivastava and Akhilendra Pratap Singh, all natives of Bahraich.
Once the four were identified, crime branch officials sought help from the Uttar Pradesh special task force (STF) to track their movements. The four men travelled to a remote village late at night on their motorbikes on several occasions, the police found. They had also visited Bahraich city a few days earlier to buy clothes and were planning to smuggle Gautam to Nepal. “Once we found out that Gautam lived alone and worked as a farmer in Nanpara (village), we kept a close watch on his four accomplices. We laid a trap on a bridge near the village along with STF officials and nabbed them,” said Mali.
The four accused told the police about Gautam’s hideout during interrogation, following which they were taken to the spot. “Since Gautam was not there, the team kept a watch for around 7-8 hours. When Gautam, reached there around 6pm on November 10, he was arrested,” said Nalawade.
On Monday, Gautam and his four associates were produced in court after being brought to Mumbai from Bahraich. All five were remanded in police custody till November 19.