New Delhi: The Delhi Police Special Cell Sunday arrested two suspects in the killing of singer-politician Sidhu Moose Wala — Ankit Sirsa and Sachin Bhiwani.
Sirsa is allegedly one of six shooters accused of carrying out the attack on Moose Wala in May, while Bhiwani is said to be responsible for harbouring four of the shooters.
Both are allegedly part of the Lawrence Bishnoi-Goldy Brar gang, which is believed to be responsible for Moose Wala’s murder.
“The two were arrested from Delhi’s Kashmere Gate bus adda,” said Special Cell Special Commissioner of Police, H.S. Dhaliwal, at a press conference Monday.
Sirsa, 19, is the third alleged shooter arrested in the case. A resident of Bhiwani, Haryana, he is said to have been involved in two other attempt-to-murder cases in Rajasthan, claimed police sources.
Bhiwani, a resident of Sonepat, Haryana, “was also wanted in a heinous case in Churu, Rajasthan. He was the main person handling all operations of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang in Rajasthan”, said Dhaliwal.
Police have recovered one 9 mm bore pistol with 10 live cartridges, one .30 mm bore pistol with nine cartridges, three Punjab Police uniforms, and two mobile handsets, with a dongle and SIM cards, from the two.
Dhaliwal said the accused had arranged for the uniforms to pose as officers of the Punjab Police to evade arrest and camouflage during the attack.
Police sources also said that the accused used dongle network to call each other through social media apps.
Twenty-nine-year-old Moose Wala was shot dead on 28 May in Punjab’s Mansa district, while he was on his way to visit a relative. The attack on the Congress leader came a day after his security cover was partially withdrawn by the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab.
Moose Wala was without his bodyguards and not travelling in his bulletproof car at the time of the shooting.
Also read: Crime, cult status, young death — Moose Wala killing brings focus on Punjab’s brutal gang feuds
A new recruit, a 5-year-old member
Sirsa has been identified as the youngest of the alleged shooters involved in the killing. Dhaliwal said “Sirsa fired with both his hands and from the closest range at Sidhu Moose Wala”.
A photo of him, recovered by the police, shows him posing with Moose Wala’s name written in bullets.
According to DCP, Special Cell, Pramod Kushwaha, Sirsa has studied till Class 9, and was allegedly involved in two shootouts in April, carried out on the direction of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s brother, Anmol. He joined the gang four months ago and Moose Wala’s is the first murder that he has been accused in, Kushwaha added.
Talking about Bhiwani, Kushwaha said, he was an associate of Sampat Nehra — a Bishnoi aide — and joined Bishnoi’s gang five years ago.
Dhaliwal said that the accused had changed around 35 hideouts since Moose Wala’s murder and would change locations every two-three days.
Previous arrests
Last month, police arrested Priyavrat, alias Fauji, who is allegedly the “main shooter” in Moose Wala’s murder. Another “shooter”, Kashish alias Kuldeep, and their “associate”, Keshav Kumar, who allegedly received them in a car after the murder, has been arrested as well.
Priyavrat was allegedly in touch with Canada-based gangster Goldy Brar.
At a press conference earlier, Dhaliwal said that “two modules”, travelling in two different cars, were involved in the attack on Moose Wala.
“In one car — a [Mahindra] Bolero that Kashish was driving — Ankit Sirsa, Deepak Munde and Priyavrat were travelling. In the other car, a [Toyota] Corolla, Jagdeep Roopa and Manpreet Mannu were travelling,” Dhaliwal had said.
According to police, Manpreet Mannu had allegedly fired the first burst of bullets at Moose Wala’s car, hitting him and bringing the vehicle to a stop. Then, from the other end, the shooters in the Bolero came and shot him again. The shooters, police claim, fled in their respective cars after confirming that the singer was dead.
Mannu, Roopa and Munde are still on the run, said Dhaliwal Monday, adding that teams from Gujarat, Haryana, MP, Jharkhand, UP and Delhi are tracking them.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
Also read: Khalistan on the Pacific: How the gangs of Punjab were born in Canada
Source: The Print
