Baba Siddique murder case: Accused in police custody till Oct 21

A court here on Sunday remanded one of the two accused arrested for allegedly shooting dead former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique to police custody till October 21.

The court directed the police to conduct a bone ossification test to determine the age of the second accused after he claimed to be a minor.

Police were directed to produce the second accused again after conducting the test. The court will then decide if proceedings against him will be conducted at a juvenile court or the regular court.

Police produced the alleged assailants, identified as Haryana residence Gurmail Baljit Singh (23) and another man, a Uttar Pradesh native, in the court on Sunday afternoon.

A former Congress veteran Siddique (66), who had joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP earlier this year, was waylaid by three men at Kher Nagar in Mumbai’s Bandra area just outside his MLA son Zeeshan Siddique’s office and shot at.

He was taken to the Lilavati Hospital where he was declared dead, police said.

The crime branch, probing the case, sought the remand of the accused duo for 14 days, saying they needed to investigate if there was any international link involved.

The person killed was not any ordinary person, but a former minister. Despite security, the assailants managed to shoot him. We need to find out the intention and motive behind the crime, the prosecution said.

Police need to probe if any political rivalry was involved in the shooting, public prosecutor Gautam Gaikwad told the court.

Advocate Sidharth Agarwal, appearing for both the accused, contended that the crime was “ very sad and disheartening”, but the role of the accused is not established.

He (Siddique) might have been killed due to a political rivalry and the two accused were falsely implicated in the case, the lawyer argued.