Baba Siddique murder case: Accused alleges 5-day illegal detention by police before arrest

Amit Hisamsingh Kumar, 31, a farmer from Kaithal in Haryana, urged the court to direct the police to produce phone-location and flight records that he says could establish when and where he was detained

MUMBAI: An accused in the Baba Siddique murder case on Thursday told a special MCOCA court that the Mumbai Police illegally detained him in Haryana for five days before bringing him to Mumbai and formally arresting him.

Former Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Baba Siddique was shot dead by three armed assailants outside his son Zeeshan’s office in Bandra East on October 12, 2024. (Hindustan Times)

Amit Hisamsingh Kumar, 31, a farmer from Kaithal in Haryana, urged the court to direct the police to produce phone-location and flight records that he says could establish when and where he was detained “before the evidence disappears”.

Kumar alleged that police officers in plain clothes picked him up in his hometown on October 18, 2024, six days after Siddique’s murder, and detained him there for five days. The prosecution, however, has said Kumar was arrested at 2.20 am on October 23, 2024, at the Mumbai police commissioner’s office. Kumar’s application seeks records that he says could establish what happened between October 18 and 23.

Former Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Baba Siddique was shot dead by three armed assailants outside his son Zeeshan’s office in Bandra East on October 12, 2024. The Mumbai Police subsequently filed a charge sheet naming 26 arrested accused and three wanted accused, including Anmol Bishnoi, brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi. The special MCOCA court framed charges against 27 accused, including Kumar, in February this year.

In his application, filed through advocate Pranay Saraf, Kumar has alleged that he was held at the Special Detective Unit (CIA-II) in Kaithal without access to any of his relatives, friends, or lawyer, and was never produced before a magistrate in the jurisdiction from which he says he was picked up.

Kumar’s application focuses on what he calls an unexplained gap in the charge sheet: how a Kaithal resident with “no reason, business, family in Mumbai” turned up in the Mumbai police commissioner’s office at 1.15 am on October 23, when the prosecution says he was arrested only hours later.

To test that account, Kumar has asked the court to summon cell-site and location data for his phone and five numbers that he says belonged to police officers involved in his alleged detention. He has also sought the flight manifest, booking and payment records for a Delhi-Mumbai IndiGo flight on October 22, 2024, as well as the Kaithal police station’s General Diary, vehicle logbook and duty rosters.

He has asked that the relevant electronic and documentary records from October 15-23, 2024, be preserved, warning that telecom data is “liable to be permanently erased if not preserved and produced in documentary form.”

Kumar has asked the court to determine whether “the prosecution version regarding presence and movement is truthful or fabricated,” and has claimed that any failure to preserve the records now would cause “irreparable prejudice” and violate his right to a fair trial under Article 21 of the Constitution.