After confirming the whereabouts of the accused persons, a joint operation with the UP STF was conducted, involving 21 police officers and personnel of the Mumbai Crime Branch, the Mumbai Police official said.The arrested persons are being brought to Mumbai.Notably, accused Dharmaraj Kashyap (19) and Shiv Kumar, alias Shiva Gautam (20), are residents of Gandara village in the Kaiserganj police station area of Bahraich district, a senior UP police officer had said after Siddique was shot dead.Kaiserganj Circle Officer (CO) Anil Kumar Singh had told PTI that Shivkumar alias Shiva had gone to Maharashtra to work as a labourer a few years ago, and in April this year, he had called his neighbour Dharmaraj Kashyap to work with him.Shiva’s father, Balkrishna, works as a mason as a daily wager.Meanwhile, arrested accused Shiv Kumar during his interrogation told police that he and Dharamraj Kashyap are from the same village.”I used to work in a scrap (shop) in Pune. My scrap shop and Shubham Lonkar’s (shop) were next to each other,” Shiv Kumar had told the police, the UP STF said in a statement on Sunday.Shubham Lonkar works for Lawrence Bishnoi. He made me talk to Lawrence Bishnoi’s brother Anmol Bishnoi several times through Snap Chat.”In exchange for the murder of Baba Siddique, I was told that after the murder you will get Rs 10 lakh and every month you will keep getting something or the other. Shubham Lonkar and Mohd. Yasin Akhtar gave us weapons, cartridges, SIM (card) and a mobile phone for the murder. After the murder, the three shooters were given new SIM and mobile phones to talk to each other,” Shiv Kumar told the police.”For the last several days, we were doing the recce of Baba Siddique in Mumbai and on the night of October 12, 2024, when we got the right time, we killed Baba Siddique. That day, because of the festival, there were police and a crowd of people due to which two people were caught on the spot and I escaped. I threw the phone on the way and went from Mumbai to Pune,” Shiv Kumar said.From Pune, I reached Bahraich via Jhansi and Lucknow. In between, I kept talking to my colleagues and handlers by asking for anyone’s phone. When I talked to Anurag using a passenger’s phone from the train, he said that Alinder, Gyan Prakash and Aakaash have together made arrangements for you to hide in Nepal.”That is why I came to Bahraich and was trying to escape to Nepal along with my colleagues. The rest of the colleagues also supported this,” Shiv Kumar said, according to the statement issued by the UP STF.According to Mumbai Police, 18 persons had been arrested in the Siddique murder case until November 7.
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