MUMBAI/NAGPUR: The killing of Baba Siddique could potentially have been prevented if Mumbai police crime branch had investigated key suspect Shubham Lonkar and not let him go in the case of firing on Salman Khan’s flat, sources in the police said.
In June, crime branch had questioned Shubham from Pune for providing shelter to suspects in the Salman firing case. However, he was allowed to go after questioning citing lack of strong evidence.Now, during the investigations, when Shubham’s name has cropped up, Mumbai police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar got agitated and pulled up crime branch officers who investigated the case, sources said.
An aspiring soldier, Shubham had failed the Indian Army recruitment test at Jaisalmer in 2018-19, and later entered the world of crime. His first fling with the law was as a teenager, when he was booked for assault by Akot police. Arrested seven years later in Jan this year with his elder brother, Pravin, for hoarding arms and cartridges, he was later bailed out.
Earlier in May this year, members of the Bishnoi gang had fired at Khan’s residence in Bandra, and the crime branch had arrested five members of the gang — Vikas Gupta, Sagar Pal, Harpal Singh alias Harry, Rafiq Choudhary, and Banwarilal Gujar. The sixth accused, Anuj Thappan, died in police custody. During their interrogation, police came across the name of Shubham alias Shubbu Lonkar from Pune, who provided the accused shelter. The crime branch’s anti-extortion cell brought in Shubham and interrogated him at length, and after finding little evidence of his involvement in the crime, he was allowed to go, said sources.
Sources said this lapse might have allowed Lonkar to remain active and involved in subsequent criminal activities, particularly to recruit fresh shooters and hatch a plot to kill Siddiqui on behalf of the Bishnoi gang. Police are still trying to figure out how Shubam came in contact with Bishnoi. It was Shubam who tweeted on social media, claiming responsibility for the killing of Siddiqui by the Bishnoi gang. Sources said absconding accused Zeeshan Akhtar could be the link between Bishnoi and Shubham, which needs to be probed.
Police have arrested Shubham’s brother, Pravin, after finding his role in the attack on Siddique. The Lonkars run a milk dairy in Pune. The two arrested accused, Dharmaraj Kashyap and another wanted accused, Shivkumar Gautam, worked in a scrap shop next to Lonkars’.
A now-deleted Facebook post by ‘Shubuu Lonkar Maharashtra’, which linked the murder to Bishnoi gang, dramatically shifted the focus of investigation to a radicalised son of a farmer from a nondescript Nivri Budruk village in Vidarbha’s Akola district. The post, according to police sources, was made by an underground Shubham Lonkar, prompting Mumbai police to launch a manhunt for him.
Though Pravin was nabbed after Siddique’s murder, probe agencies are clueless about Shubham’s whereabouts. Sources said Lonkar brothers played a key role in planning and executing Siddique’s murder by hiring assailants from across India, supplying them with weapons & providing logistical support.