After Siddique firing, shooter Shivkumar changed clothes, returned to spot: Police

'He had thrown a bag carrying his shirt, pistol and his Aadhaar card at the spot. After the shooting, he found people were in panic and a large number of policemen had arrived. He also observed police were asking bystanders for leads on the perpetrators,' an official said.

Mumbai: Shivkumar Gautam, the alleged main shooter in the Baba Siddique murder, remained at the spot for 20 minutes after the NCP leader was gunned down on October 12, an official said on Thursday.

He changed his clothes and returned to the spot, the official added.

“He had thrown a bag carrying his shirt, pistol and his Aadhaar card at the spot. After the shooting, he found people were in panic and a large number of policemen had arrived. He also observed police were asking bystanders for leads on the perpetrators,” the official said.

He saw that two of his associates had been nabbed from the spot itself, the official added.

“Gautam took an autorickshaw and went near Lilavati hospital, where Siddique was admitted, to get confirmation on whether he had died. At 10.47 pm, he left for Kurla railway station. While on the train, he threw his mobile phone somewhere. Efforts are on to trace it,” the official said.

The official also said a suspect brought from a border village in Punjab was allowed to go after no role of his surfaced.

During the interrogation of the accused persons, Crime Branch officials found that wanted accused Shubham Lonkar was in direct contact with Anmol Bishnoi, brother of the jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.

The Mumbai crime branch also found that Shubham Lonkar had trained with an AK-47 rifle in the dense forests some 50 kilometres from Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur in July, he said.

“Shubham Lonkar was with arrested accused Vilas Apune and Rupesh Mohol when the trio had gone to Mahakal. Some people trained Shubham Lonkar. The training session went on for four days, and their stay was for five days,” the official said.

“We are probing if Shubham Lonkar got weapons training from Naxalites. Lonkar had warned Apune and Mohol that they should not discuss the training with anybody. We also got information that a corporator from Pune was on the hit list of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang,” he said.

According to the official, in the Baba Siddique murder conspiracy, arrested accused Anurag Kashyap and Gyan Prakash Tripathi had sent money to scrap dealer Harish Kumar.

“Harish had transferred money into various other accounts and had given his ATM card to shooters to withdraw money,” he said.

Baba Siddique (66) was shot dead by three gunmen near his MLA son Zeeshan Siddique’s office in Mumbai’s Bandra area on October 12.