Shiv Kumar Gautam, the main accused in the murder case of Maharashtra politician Baba Siddique, has said that he was ordered to kill the 66-year-old leader or his MLA son, Zeeshan Siddique, police sources said. Shiv Kumar, 20, was arrested along with his four aides from Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich on Sunday while he was trying to flee to Nepal. He is among the three shooters who shot dead Mr Siddique outside Zeeshan Siddique’s office in Mumbai on October 12.

During interrogation, he told the police that Anmol Bishnoi, the brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, had told him to shoot whoever he saw first.

Before carrying out the murder, Anmol Bishnoi, who is believed to be in Canada and is also on the most-wanted list of the National Investigation Agency, had given a pep talk to Shiv Kumar.

Mumbai police crime branch sources said Anmol told him what he was going to do was for “God and the society.”

A picture of Zeeshan Siddique, 32, was reportedly found on a cell phone seized from one of the three men who shot his father.

Shiv Kumar Gautam Changed Clothes After Baba Siddique Murder

After killing Baba Siddique, Shiv Kumar Gautam immediately changed his shirt and disappeared into the crowd so that no one could identify him, Mumbai police crime branch sources. 

He then stayed near the crime scene to avoid any confrontation.

The 20-year-old then initially travelled from the crime scene to Kurla in an auto and then boarded a local train to Thane, sources said.

From Thane, he took a train to Pune and dumped his mobile phone during the journey.

Shiv Kumar stayed in Pune for about seven days and then went to Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi by train. He then stayed there for five days and went to the state capital Lucknow. 

In Lucknow, he bought a new mobile and contacted his aides. After spending 11 days there, he travelled to his native Bahraich and met his aides, who had arranged a safehouse for him in a nearby village.

Shiv Kumar also said that after killing Baba Siddique, he first planned to go to Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain and then to Vaishno Devi in Jammu before fleeing the country. 

How Cops Caught Shiv Kumar Gautam

The police traced about 45 people, including Shiv Kumar Gautam’s family members and his close aides, and tracked their movements after Baba Siddique’s murder.

During the investigation, they zeroed down to four people who were constantly in contact with Shiv Kumar, police sources said.

The police then laid a trap and waited for those four accused to meet Shiv Kumar. They then caught him from the Nanpara area of Bahraich on Sunday.

He was arrested in a joint operation by the police officials of Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai.

Anurag Kashyap, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Akash Srivastava and Akhileshendra Pratap Singh were also arrested for giving shelter to Shiv Kumar and helping him escape to Nepal. 

The police have so far arrested 20 in the case.

Baba Siddique was murdered apparently because of his close relationship with actor Salman Khan. Lawrence Bishnoi’s associates have hinted that the grouse against Mr Khan is about the blackbucks he killed 20 years ago. Blackbucks are sacred to the Bishnoi community.

In the most significant appointment yet for India from the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced Mike Waltz, a Congressman from Florida who is the co-chair of the India Caucus, as his new National Security Adviser.

Waltz, 50, is a retired Army colonel who served as a Green Beret, an elite special forces unit of the US Army.

He has been a member of the US House of Representatives since 2019. He has been a forceful critic of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy and serves on the House Armed Services Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee this term.

He has called for Europe to do more to support Ukraine and for the US to be more stringent with its support, aligning with a key foreign policy goal of the President-elect. He has also been a staunch critic of the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Waltz has praised Trump for pushing Nato allies to spend more on defence, but unlike the President-elect has not suggested the US pull out of the alliance.

“Look we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations,” Waltz said last month

Waltz is also on the Republican’s China taskforce and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

Waltz had been open about his willingness to serve in the administration and was considered a candidate to lead the Pentagon. The role of National Security Adviser does not require Senate confirmation.

Waltz is also a co-chair of the India Caucus in the House, which is the largest country-specific group in the US Congress.

Trump has been moving swiftly to announce key personnel of his incoming administration, including Susan Wiles, his White House Chief of Staff who will be the first woman to hold the position.

Trump’s other appointments include Stephen Miller, as a senior adviser, who is a known critic of the H-1b visa programme which he tried to kill in Trump’s first administration.

The President-elect has been quickly assembling a roster of senior staff since winning last week’s election. He has already announced Tom Homan as his “border czar,” Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the United Nations, and Lee Zeldin as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

–IANS

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