The Mumbai Police crime branch on Tuesday night arrested four persons, including one from Haryana and three from Pune, who were allegedly part of the conspiracy behind the murder of NCP leader Baba Siddique. This takes the total number of people arrested in the case to 14. The accused arrested from Haryana has been identified as Amit Hisamsing Kumar (29). The three arrested from Pune have been identified as Rupesh Mohol (22), Karan Salve (19) and Shivam Kohad (20). An officer said that Kumar, a resident of Kaithal district in Haryana was an aide of Zeeshan Akhtar, one of the main conspirators of the murder who is now absconding. After Akhtar was released from prison, he resided with Kumar who had taken a flat on rent. “Despite not having a regular job, he would roam around in high-end cars. He also has a criminal record. We are checking if he has worked for the Lawrence Bishnoi gang in the past,” the officer added. Regarding the role of other accused, an officer said that they were to initially fire at Siddique but eventually backed out. They were arrested as they were aware of the conspiracy. Based on his interrogation, police found that Shivkumar Gautam, absconding accused who shot at Siddique, was directly in touch with Akhtar. “So far, we were looking for the common link between the Pune module led by Shubham Akhtar and the Haryana module led by Zeeshan Akhtar. We have found that the two sides were linked to each other and spoke several times before the hit was carried out,” the officer said. Police are on the lookout for Akhtar, Shubham Lonkar and Gautam who were believed to be directly taking orders from the Bishnoi gang to gun down Siddique. The NCP leader was shot dead outside the office of his MLA son, Zeeshan Siddique, in Bandra on October 12. Police said prima facie it appears that the motive was to create fear about the Bishnoi gang to carry out extortion activities in the city.
