The state police on Thursday made its tenth arrest in connection with the sensational murder of Hindu Samaj Party leader Kamlesh Tiwari in Lucknow on October 18.
Mohd Kamran was the latest to be arrested in Bareilly, the police said. He is allegedly a close aide of a Delhi-based lawyer who was arrested last week for helping the killers after the crime.
Additional superintendent of police (ASP) West, Vikas Chandra Tripathi, who is supervising the probe, said Kamran was arrested for helping the two killers, Ashfaq Sheikh Hussain and Moinuddin Khurshid Pathan, who murdered Tiwari after entering his house in Lucknow’s Khursheed Bagh locality.
He said Kamran helped the killers and concealed evidence related to the crime on being asked to do by the lawyer Mohd Naved Raza Siddiqui.
Kamran was booked under sections 201 (concealment of evidence) and 216 (harbouring criminals) of the Indian Penal Code, the ASP added.
Another official privy to the investigation said Kamran placed the killers’ cell phones in a train to mislead the police into believing that they had moved towards Ambala. He said the lawyer and Kamran helped the two killers sneak into Nepal through Lakhimpur Kheri’s Gauri Fanta area on October 19.
The lawyer, a Bareilly resident who practises in Delhi, drove the two killers to the border in his sedan from Bareilly. He dropped them a few metres before the border, the officer said.
{{/usCountry}}The lawyer, a Bareilly resident who practises in Delhi, drove the two killers to the border in his sedan from Bareilly. He dropped them a few metres before the border, the officer said.
{{/usCountry}}He said the lawyer asked the two alleged killers to mingle among two groups of local people crossing the border. The lawyer later crossed the border too and picked up the two alleged killers again so that he could drop them at an accommodation arranged in Nepal, the official said.
The official said the two alleged killers stayed at the hideout in Nepal for several hours on October 20 where the lawyer helped them get two new mobile phones and SIM cards through his local contact. He said Naved helped the two killers to return to India through his local contact who dropped them again on Indian territory on his motorcycle on the evening of October 20.
The official said the two alleged killers returned to India with a plan to surrender after being convinced by Ashfaq’s wife and father to do so.
“The two killers returned to Palia, Lakhimpur Kheri, by taking a lift on a tanker and then hired a car from there to reach Shahjahanpur from where they boarded a train to Delhi and thereafter reached Gujarat by another train, Porbandar Express. The Gujarat ATS said they arrested Ashfaq and Moinuddin after the duo reached its jurisdiction,” he said.