Baba Siddique: What we know so far about public murder of an Indian politician

Police have been granted custody of the arrested men for a week. They say they are on the lookout for their accomplices.

“We have set up 15 teams and investigation is on to identify who provided logistical support to the shooters,” senior police official Datta Nalawade said.

While the police have not confirmed it, several reports citing sources have linked the arrested men with the notorious Bishnoi gang. The gang’s leader Lawrence Bishnoi is an accused in several cases and is currently in a high-security prison in Gujarat state.

Within hours of the shooting, a man claiming to be a member of the gang posted on Facebook that they were behind Siddique’s killing. Police have not yet confirmed the authenticity of the post.

Though Bishnoi has been in jail since 2015, he frequently makes news. Many social media accounts claiming to belong to him or his associates have often posted his selfies from jail. He even gave interviews to a TV channel in 2022, prompting an investigation.

Many of the reports on Bishnoi are based on police sources and it’s not clear how he conducts the gang’s operations while in prison.

The gang’s name popped up in connection with the murder of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala in 2022.

In April, police arrested two gang members for allegedly firing shots outside the apartment of actor Salman Khan in Mumbai.

On Monday, the Canadian police also said it believed the Bishnoi group had connections, external to Indian government agents who were using the gang to target Sikh separatists on their soil. India has not officially responded to the police claims.