A COURT here on Sunday remanded one of the two accused arrested for allegedly shooting dead former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique to police custody till October 21. The court directed the police to conduct a bone ossification test to determine the age of the second accused after he claimed to be a minor. Police were directed to produce the second accused again after conducting the test. The court will then decide if proceedings against him will be conducted at a juvenile court or the regular court. Police produced the alleged assailants, identified as Haryana residence Gurmail Baljit Singh (23) and another man, a Uttar Pradesh native, in the court on Sunday afternoon. The crime branch, probing the case, sought the remand of the accused duo for 14 days, saying they needed to investigate if there was any international link involved. The person killed was not any ordinary person, but a former minister. Despite security, the assailants managed to shoot him.

 

We need to find out the intention and motive behind the crime, the prosecution said. Police need to probe if any political rivalry was involved in the shooting, public prosecutor Gautam Gaikwad told the court. Advocate Sidharth Agarwal, appearing for both the accused, contended that the crime was “ very sad and disheartening”, but the role of the accused is not established. He (Siddique) might have been killed due to a political rivalry and the two accused were falsely implicated in the case, the lawyer argued. Two suspects in Baba Siddique murder from same UP village:TWO youths involved in the killing of NCP leader Baba Siddique are from the same village in Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh.

 

Both of them were from regular families and had no criminal history, police said on Sunday. Two of the accused, Dharmaraj Kashyap and Shiv Kumar alias Shiva Gautam, are residents of Gandara village in Bahraich. Superintendent of Police Vrinda Shukla said both of them were working at a scrap shop in Pune, Maharashtra. They have no criminal history in Bahraich, he said. Shiva’s mother, Suman, expressed shock and disbelief at the allegations. While speaking to the media, she described her son as a hardworking and peaceful person. She said that he had gone to Pune to work at a scrap shop and had last visited the village during Holi.