In a major breakthrough in the murder case of slain NCP leader Baba Siddique, the Mumbai Crime Branch along with the UP STF team in a joint operation, arrested accused Shiva Kumar from Uttar Pradesh's Bahraich on Sunday (November 10).The joint operation was held with the UP STF. A team from the Mumbai Crime Branch, comprising six officers and 15 personnel, apprehended shooter Shiva Kumar, along with two other accused in Uttar Pradesh. The accused are being brought to Mumbai.
They also arrested four individuals—Anurag Kashyap, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Akash Srivastava, and Akhileshendra Pratap Singh—for providing him shelter and helping his bid to flee the country. Siddique, a former Maharashtra minister and leader in Ajit Pawar's faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), was shot multiple times near Nirmal Nagar in Mumbai on October 12. Three assailants shot him outside his son MLA Zeeshan Siddique's office building in Bandra East. Siddique succumbed to his injuries at Lilavati Hospital.
According to police reports, Siddique was targeted with a total of six shots, three of which struck him. Police had earlier arrested two accused, identified as Gurmail Singh, a native of Haryana and Dharamraj Kashyap from Uttar Pradesh. While Singh and Kashyap were arrested soon after Siddique murder, reports claimed that Shiva Kumar had fled from the crime scene. The police have arrested 16 people in the case so far. Jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi's younger brother Anmol, believed to be living in Canada, was allegedly behind the murder, but the motive was not clear, police said earlier.