Zeeshan Siddique points to SRA, builder angle missing in charge sheet

Shoulder:Baba Siddique murder case

MUMBAI: A day after the Mumbai police crime branch filed a 4590-page charge sheet in connection with the murder of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Baba Siddique, his son and former MLA Zeeshan Siddique objected to police negating any builder or Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) project angle in the case.

On Tuesday, Zeeshan expressed that the family was opposing the displacement of citizens living in slums in the area where the project is intended and that they had pointed out the same in their statements to the Mumbai police, after the murder. He also said that he is not sure if the Mumbai police’s probe veered in that direction at all.

Siddique was assassinated outside his son and then MLA’s office in Bandra East on October 12. On Monday, Mumbai police crime branch filed a charge sheet against 26 individuals arrested in connection with the murder and identified three wanted suspects, including Anmol Bishnoi, brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, Mohammed Yasin Akhtar and a Pune resident Shubham Lonkar. Police described the trio as key conspirators in the high-profile killing. Investigators also alleged that Anmol Bishnoi, the leader of an organised crime syndicate, orchestrated the murder “to establish supremacy in Mumbai.”

“I have yet to get a copy of the charge sheet but what we have learnt through news reports is the absence of the SRA project or builder angle linked to the assassination plot of my father, which I and members of my family disagree with,” Zeeshan told HT.

“We have our suspicions which we have already placed before the police through our statement,” he said, adding, “I want to know which builder was called or interrogated, and whether a proper investigation was carried out in that direction or just a statement was taken by the Mumbai police.”

He said that since the incident, he has insisted that his father lost his life for the lives of the poor. “In fact an FIR was filed against me before my father was killed in this regard. We were opposing a project because we do not want the tenants to be displaced. We wanted their in-situ redevelopment which a builder probably does not want,” Zeeshan said.

He also questioned the grounds on which the police had blamed Anmol Bishnoi, Mohammed Yasin Akhtar and Shubham Lonkar as key conspirators. “Have the police interrogated Anmol? Has he confessed to the killing or has he said that no builder has given him the contract to kill my father?” he asked. “There could be murders every day and they keep blaming the Bishnoi brothers, who are in different jails at present, and keep committing such acts, making a joke of the city’s law and order situation.”