Mumbai, Oct 16 – The shooters implicated in the assassination of NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique reportedly acquired their firearm handling skills by watching YouTube tutorials from a rented house in Kurla, officials disclosed on Wednesday.
Baba Siddique, 66, a former Congress leader who recently joined the Nationalist Congress Party, was ambushed by three assailants in Mumbai’s Nirmal Nagar area, just outside his son Zeeshan Siddique’s office, on Saturday night.
During the investigation led by the Mumbai police’s crime branch, authorities uncovered that one of the suspected shooters, Shivkumar Gautam, who is currently at large, had gained experience with firearms through celebratory gunfire at weddings in Uttar Pradesh, according to officials.
Interrogations of the arrested suspects, Gurmail Singh and Dharmaraj Kashyap, revealed that Gautam was designated as the “main shooter” due to his proficiency in handling weapons. The pair had undergone shooting practice under Gautam’s guidance at the rented Kurla residence, where they engaged in “dry practice” (simulated shooting without bullets).
For nearly four weeks, the group relied on YouTube videos to learn how to load and unload firearms, as they struggled to find a suitable location for practical training, officials stated.
In addition, one of the alleged co-conspirators, Shubham Lonkar, had previously come under police scrutiny after being questioned in June regarding a shooting incident outside actor Salman Khan’s residence in April, believed to be linked to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. Lonkar was arrested in January for an Arms Act violation in Akola district but was released on bail.
Since then, he had maintained contact with Lawrence Bishnoi’s brother Anmol, which kept him on law enforcement’s radar until he became untraceable on September 24.
The investigation further revealed that the accused communicated using social media applications like Snapchat and Instagram to evade detection. Lonkar, who had familiarity with mobile apps, instructed all conspirators to use Instagram for voice communication and Snapchat for text chats, leveraging its feature that automatically deletes most messages after they are viewed or expire.
