Anmol Bishnoi ordered Baba Siddiqui’s murder to strike fear: Police chargesheet
Anmol Bishnoi ordered Baba Siddiqui’s murder to strike fear: Police chargesheet Anmol Bishnoi ordered Baba Siddiqui’s murder to strike fear: Police chargesheet
The Mumbai Police on Monday filed a chargesheet against 26 accused in the Baba Siddiqui murder case. The Crime Branch had invoked MCOCA in the case, and so the chargesheet, which has been filed in the Mumbai Sessions Court, will now be sent to a Special MCOCA Court.
The chargesheet contains approximately 4,590 pages of witness statements and evidence, with three of the accused listed as wanted. The wanted accused are Zeeshan Akhtar, Shubham Lonkar, and Anmol Bishnoi, the brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.
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Mumbai Police have included statements from 210 witnesses in the chargesheet. The chargesheet also specifies the reasons behind the murder. According to the police investigation, the three main motives for the murder were Siddiqui’s closeness to actor Salman Khan; revenge for Anuj Thapan’s suicide in police custody; and the Lawrence Bishnoi gang’s attempt to establish its supremacy.
To substantiate these motives, police relied on evidence, including a Facebook post by Shubham Lonkar.
The Bishnoi gang had fired outside Salman Khan’s residence on April 14, 2024. Two motorcycle-borne individuals opened fire outside the actor’s home in Bandra, Mumbai. The shooters, Vicky Gupta and Sagar Pal, were later arrested in Gujarat. Another accused, Anuj Thapan, was arrested on April 26 in Punjab, along with another individual connected to the case.
Anuj Thapan later died on May 1 inside the toilet of the police station. While the police claimed Thapan had killed himself, his mother, Rita Devi, filed a petition in the Bombay High Court alleging foul play and claiming that he was murdered.
Siddiqui, a three-time Congress MLA who had shifted to the Ajit Pawar-controlled Nationalist Congress Party in 2024, was shot dead on October 12 at Nirmal Nagar. He was killed when he stepped outside the office of his son, MLA Zeeshan Siddiqui. According to police, the two arrested shooters and one absconding shooter had been conducting surveillance of Siddiqui’s office for several weeks before firing six rounds at him.