New Delhi: Scrap dealers in Pune and accused in one of the most high-profile murders in Mumbai, a group of ‘close friends’ has put a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich in the spotlight.
The Mumbai police’s crime branch suspects that it was Shiv Kumar Gautam who shot Baba Siddique dead on a bustling street in Bandra East on 12 October evening. Investigators say out of the six shots he fired, three hit the former Maharashtra cabinet minister, who then passed away at the Lilavati Hospital. Shiv’s friend, Dharmaraj Kashyap, was arrested within half an hour of the hit job. Harish, their friend, also landed in the police net later.
All three are from the Gandara village in Bahraich.
As news of Baba Siddique’s murder and police arresting an accused from Bahraich broke, the village suddenly found itself in the middle of the police investigation.
Located nearly 60 kilometres from Bahraich town, Gandara is home to a closely linked group of youths going to Pune to work in the scrap business. A member of that group, Akash, got a notification about the arrest of Dharmaraj Kashyap on his mobile web browser.
“I opened it with curiosity. Who could the person be? I did not have any hint or idea that I would see the picture of Dharmaraj and Shiv,” Akash told ThePrint in Gandara village. In a panic after spotting his friends, Akash delayed relaying the information to his family.
However, the cousins and brothers of Shiv Kumar Gautam and Dharmaraj Kashyap needed no ‘soft notification’ about the crime. The Mumbai Police came knocking on their doors.
Left village after scolding: Dharmaraj Kashyap
Dharmaraj Kashyap’s elder brothers, Gully Kashyap and Anurag Kashyap, were one of the first ones to be taken into police custody for questioning in the case.
Recalling that time, Anurag Kashyap told ThePrint that the investigators asked him whether the family knew the motive of his younger brother. Dharmaraj, he said, had left home nearly five months ago after Anurag had scolded him for missing examinations.
“He is the youngest among five brothers. I scolded him and also beat him up. That made him angry, and he left the village to go to Pune nearly five months ago. I scolded him because he had secured more than 75% marks in high school but missed his intermediate exam without any reason,” Anurag said about his younger brother, Dharmaraj.
Anurag informed Mumbai Police of not getting in touch with his younger brother for nearly 45 days ahead of the murder. The police kept Anurag in Mumbai for a whole week of questioning before allowing him to return to his village this Saturday.
Dharmaraj’s mother, Kushma Devi, said her son had no criminal habits when he was in his village and that the news of the murder shocked her. “I do not know where he picked up this criminal character,” she told ThePrint.
Investigators say while Shiv was chosen as the hitman, Dharmaraj and Gurmail Singh, another man arrested right after the murder, were a backup in the meticulously planned conspiracy against Baba Siddique.
The arrests of Dharmaraj and Gurmail helped investigators zero in on Shiv as the main accused, but he remains elusive nearly two weeks later.
The police, however, have managed to arrest Harish. The charge against Harish is that he facilitated a meeting between Shiv and the murder conspirators.
Instagram ‘gangster’ to hitman: Shiv Kumar Gautam
Shiv Kumar Gautam has an Instagram account with the username m_shiva_302. Though 302 could be just another number, it makes some sense for a man who calls himself a “gangster” in one of many say-it-all pictures in his account to use 302 in his username.
The section slapped on persons accused of murder under the erstwhile Indian Penal Code was 302, but the IPC ceased to exist from the intervening night of 30 June and 1 July.
A dropout after Class 5, Shiv worked hard on social media to pretend that he was living the life while working in the scrap business in Pune.
In the village, Shiv’s mother lives in a narrow lane, primarily dominated by daily wage labourers. Suman Devi’s blood pressure shot up in the days after Mumbai police named her son as the main accused.
Claiming to have never been made aware of Pune and Mumbai, Suman Devi said she learned about the murder the morning after it happened when Gautam’s friends informed her about the news videos that they had been watching on their phones.
She said not unlike the other youth in the village, Shiv—who studied till Class 5 only—frequently visited Pune to work with Harish. “Last time, he left a week after Holi. I did not talk to him daily, but his friends told me he has settled in Pune with work,” she said.
While repairing a cot in front of her house, which she claimed to have constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Suman Devi cited the family’s financial condition as her reason for not posing the tough questions to her son.
“We could not afford medicines for ourselves if his father could not get work for three to four days. Never have I even heard of Mumbai. He had been taking care of the family by working in Pune. How could we raise questions?” Suman Devi asked.
“He did not leave anything behind at home — which we could offer to police or media. He had his Aadhar card updated from Haryana, where he earlier worked, but he took that away with him, too. Police came here to question us twice, but we don’t know where he could be now,” she said.
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Villagers’ point person in Pune: Harish
Nearly two to three dozen youths from the Gandara village travelled to Pune frequently to work in the scrap shop of Harishkumar Balakram (Harish), who established the business nearly four years ago.
Village youth looking for jobs for a few months would go to Pune and work in the scrap shop, which Harish had taken on rent. Harish would let them stay in the vacant rooms of the shop.
Harish, a cousin to Dharmaraj, is the third accused from the village in the Baba Siddiqui murder case.
Harish’s elder brother, Arjun Kumar Kashyap, who has been travelling from Gandara to Pune to work in Harish’s scrap business for 18 years, did not get along with Harish and worked in the same business from another location in Pune.
The morning after Baba Siddiqui’s murder, the police broke the news to Arjun in what became, as he described to ThePrint, an unforgettable moment in his life.
“The police quickly asked me to get inside their car and took away my phone and Aadhaar card. However, they did not confront me but made it clear that they were picking me up only for questioning,” Arjun told ThePrint. Released this Saturday after questioning, Arjun said that he still does not understand what his younger brother was up to in Pune and how he got in touch with gangsters.
A day after picking up Arjun, the Mumbai police arrested Harish from Gandara, where he was recovering from a toe fracture suffered while travelling on a bike to the village from Gorakhpur a couple of months ago.
Harish’s mother, Shyamkali Devi, who works as a cook in the village school under the mid-day meal scheme, said that the police took Harish when she was away at school. “We had no idea what had been happening in Pune. I am so devastated to learn all this,” she said.
‘Entire group under lens’
The Mumbai police have questioned another village youth, Rajesh, who worked at Harish’s scrap shop when Harish was away due to his toe fracture. However, as cops started appearing there, the landlord threw Rajesh out, compelling him to return to Gandara.
In the village, Mumbai police have also questioned Akash Srivastava—who has claimed to be the childhood friend of both Shiv and Dharmaraj—and others who went to Pune to work in the scrap shop.
Akash said that the three friends earlier would spend nearly 90 percent of their time together in the village. Despite Shiv and Dharmaraj revealing their plans of coming home this Diwali to Akash, Akash was “absolutely unaware” of Shiv’s prowess with the gun, or his friend’s criminal activities in Pune.
“I have never seen him with any firearms, let alone sophisticated weapons that the police have claimed he has fired from. I do not know where he learnt all this,” Akash told ThePrint.
Having been booked himself in a case under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, along with Dharmaraj’s brother Anurag, Akash also faced the Mumbai police’s questioning in the Baba Siddique murder.
The Mumbai police crime branch, so far, has arrested 14 accused in the Baba Siddique murder and assessed that Gautam, along with the arrested accused, were trained to shoot at a rented house in Kurla.
So far, investigators have found that Shubham Lonkar, an operative of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, and Nitin Gautam Sapre led the murder conspiracy and roped in the trio of Gautam, Kashyap and Gurmail Singh for the murder. Lonkar, who is still on the run, in a now-deleted social media post, had taken responsibility for the murder. His post also introduced Baba Siddique’s association with Bollywood star Salman Khan as an angle in the murder.
The Mumbai police have found that Shiv practised firing and got the idea of managing guns through YouTube videos, but his mother has all but tears to offer to questions about what his life has turned out to be.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)