Baba Siddique’s son’s photo found in accused’s phone, was sent via Snapchat
A week after NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique was shot dead outside Zeeshan Siddique’s office, the Mumbai Police found an image of his son on the accused’s phone.
The mastermind in the case used the social media application Snapchat to share Zeeshan’s image with the shooters, police stated, further adding that the shooters and conspirators used the application to communicate.
Baba Siddique was shot dead outside his son’s office while he was bursting firecrackers on the occasion of Dussehra. Of the three shooters, Gurmail Singh and Dharmaraj Kashyap have been arrested, while Shivkumar Gautam is presently on the run. A fourth suspect, Harish Kumar Balakram Nisad, was arrested in Uttar Pradesh on Monday and brought to Mumbai yesterday.
The three shooters accused in the murder of former Maharashtra minister and NCP leader, Baba Siddique, had learnt how to use firearms by watching tutorial videos on YouTube while living in rented accomodation in Mumbai’s Kurla area, reports said.
The accused spent nearly four weeks watching such videos and communicating through Instagram and Snapchat to avoid detection. Both the applications have a feature which automatically deletes most messages after they are viewed or expire.
The Lawrence Bishnoi gang has claimed responsibility for the murder of Baba Siddique. A Facebook post by a gang member, which quickly went viral, said the gang targeted Siddique because of his close ties to Bollywood actor Salman Khan and alleged links to underworld figures like Dawood Ibrahim.
Salman Khan has faced multiple threats from the Lawrence Bishnoi gang over the past several years, with the most recent incident occurring in April this year, when two bike-borne men opened fire outside his Mumbai residence.
In June 2022, Khan received a handwritten note from an unidentified person, warning that he would suffer the same fate as singer Sidhu Moose Wala, who was killed in May 2022, allegedly by the Bishnoi gang in Punjab’s Mansa district.