Kanhaiya Lal's killers tried to infiltrate BJP cadre, reveals probe
The ongoing investigations into the brutal murder of Kanhaiya Lal Teli are indicative that Riyaz Attari, was trying to get close to BJP leaders and workers such as those affiliated to Muslim Rashtriya Manch, including Irshad Chainwala, a member of BJP Minority Morcha and Tahir Raza Khan, a BJP worker with a view to target them
The Rajasthan unit of Bharatiya Janata Party has denied Congress allegation of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal's killers having links to the party.
Mohammad Riyaz Attari and Ghous Mohammed hacked tailor Kanhaiya Lal to death in Rajasthan’s Udaipur on Tuesday for supporting former BJP leader Nupur Sharma’s remarks on Prophet Mohammed.
"Anyone can have a photo with any leader. It does not mean that he is a member of the BJP," Sadiq Khan, the state president of BJP's minority cell, said.
The ongoing investigations into the brutal murder of Kanhaiya Lal Teli are indicative that Riyaz Attari, was trying to get close to BJP leaders and workers such as those affiliated to Muslim Rashtriya Manch, including Irshad Chainwala, a member of BJP Minority Morcha and Tahir Raza Khan, a BJP worker with a view to target them. It has also been revealed that he had carried out recce of BJP establishments and functionaries of the party for this purpose.
Earlier in the day, Congress media department head Pawan Khera had claimed that Riyaz Atri was a member of the BJP.
ALSO READ: Udaipur killing accused paid ₹1,000 to get ‘2611’ for bike number plate: Cops
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
Ghous Mohammed and Riyaz Attri, who filmed the killing of Kanhaiya Lal, were nabbed at Rajsamand district of Rajasthan. They had not only beheaded the tailor, but also filmed the entire murderous act and threatened Prime Minister Modi.
During the interrogation, the accused revealed that they were self-radicalised and followers of Karachi-based Dawat-e-Islami leader Illyas Attar Qadri, whose followers call themselves as Attari. The electronic devices recovered from the killers and those detained for providing logistical support have been sent for forensic analysis.
According to counter-terrorism experts, the another accused Ghous Mohammed travelled to Saudi Arabia for Umrah in 2013 and then in 2019. He had also gone for religious training at Dawat-e-Islami headquarters in Karachi in 2013-2014. However, there is no evidence that he received any weapons training apart from religious training in Karachi.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
