After a five-day-long hunt, the Gujrat Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) on Tuesday night nabbed Ashfaq Husain and Moinuddin Ahmad of Surat, who were prime suspects in the murder of Hindu Samaj Party president Kamlesh Tiwari in Naka on October 18.
IG (Lucknow Range) SK Bhagat, who is heading the SIT formed after the murder incident which rocked Uttar Pradesh, said, “We were informed by Gujrat ATS that both the killers have been arrested from Gujarat-Rajasthan border when they were trying to sneak into Rajasthan”.
He said the SIT had circulated photos of the suspects on largescale and that helped the Gujarat ATS nab the killers. “We are in contact with the ATS team of Gujarat and are waiting for further details,” he said.
Meanwhile, the SIT got four-day police custody remand (PCR) of the conspirators, three of whom were detained a day after the incident.
A spokesman said the police were granted the PCR of Maulana Mohsin Sheikh, Faizan Yunus and Rashid Ahmed who were rounded up in Surat, and Sayyed Asim who was detained by Maharashtra ATS in Nagpur.
Earlier, teams conducting probe into the murder case suspected that Ashfaq Husain and Moinuddin Ahmad of Surat were holed up at some place in west UP. Following the lead, the agencies conducted raids in different districts of the region.
On late Monday night, the sleuths of Anti-Terror Squad rounded up a cleric from Bareilly and had brought him to Lucknow for quizzing and to make him face the murder conspirators at the ATS headquarters on Tuesday.
Sources disclosed that that the ATS sleuths had rounded up three persons from Bareilly and two from Shahjahanpur in different raids conducted on Tuesday.
“The killers are not using their mobile phones. Instead, they are making calls using strangers’ phones to get help from sympathisers or to pass information to their handlers. In the past, they used cell phones of unknown commuters or taxi drivers and later changed their locations, which made it difficult for the investigators to track them down,” the sources said.
The IG (Lucknow Range) said the killers were arrested due to the pressure mounted on them and their sympathisers by massive raids.
Earlier, a team brought Sayyed Asim Ali who was nabbed in Nagpur and interrogated him at ATS headquarters in Lucknow.
On the other hand, SSP (Lucknow) Kalanidhi Naithani was summoned to the UP DGP office where he presented the details of investigation made in the case so far on Tuesday. Also, SIT team members, including the IG (Lucknow Range), quizzed the suspects in police custody.
Soon after the murder on October 18, the police had rounded up conspirators Maulana Mohsin Sheikh, Faizan Yunus and Rashid Ahmed in Surat. Rashid’s father told interrogators that Ashfaq used to live in the same lane as him in Surat but he denied being acquainted with Moinuddin. Ashfaq is said to be a native of Pilibhit but cops are yet to verify it.Kamlesh Tiwari (45), associated with a faction of Hindu Mahasabha, was killed in his office in Khurshed Bagh under Naka Hindola police station in Lucknow on October 18. Two persons had visited Tiwari with a box of sweets before slitting his throat, inflicting multiple stabs and shooting him in his face.
