Baba Siddique’s shooters learnt to operate firearms from YouTube videos

Arrested accused trained in shooting at rented house in Kurla, where they did 'dry practice' (shooting without bullets)

Mumbai: Shooters involved in the killing of NCP leader and former Maharashtra Minister Baba Siddique learnt to handle firearms by watching videos on YouTube at a rented house in Kurla, officials said on Wednesday.

Baba Siddique (66), a former Congress leader who had joined the Nationalist Congress Party earlier this year, was waylaid by three persons in Mumbai’s Nirmal Nagar, just outside his MLA son Zeeshan Siddique’s office, and shot on Saturday night.

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The Mumbai police’s crime branch, which is investigating the case, during the interrogation of the accused persons found that suspected shooter Shivkumar Gautam, who is on the run, had learnt to handle guns during the celebratory firings at weddings in Uttar Pradesh, an official said.

During the interrogation of the arrested accused — Gurmail Singh and Dharmaraj Kashyap — it also came to light that Gautam was hired as the “main shooter”, as he had the knowledge of handling firearms, he said.

Kashyap and Singh were trained in shooting by Gautam at a rented house in Kurla, where they did “dry practice” (shooting without bullets), he said.

They learnt loading and unloading the weapon by watching YouTube videos for nearly four weeks, as they could not find an open space for practice, the official said.

One of the alleged co-conspirators, Shubham Lonkar, was on police radar till September 24, after he was questioned in June in connection with an incident of firing outside actor Salman Khan’s residence here in April as the involvement of Lawrence Bishnoi gang was suspected.

Shubham Lonkar had been arrested in January in an Arms Act case registered at Akot police station in Maharashtra’s Akola district but he later got bail. Police had recovered more than ten firearms in that case, an official said.

Shubham had been found to be in communication with Lawrence Bishnoi‘s brother Anmol, he said.

Since then he was on the police radar, but he went untraceable on September 24, the official said.

During the investigation, it also came to light that the accused persons used to communicate with each other by using social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram, he said.

Shubham Lonkar has a knowledge of mobile phone apps, he said.

He had asked all the members involved in the conspiracy (to kill Siddique) to speak via Instagram and chat through Snapchat to avoid surveillance, the official said.

Snapchat has a feature which automatically deletes most messages after they’ve been viewed or expired, he said.