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

The death of a legislator in a busy area of Mumbai, India, has shocked people all over the country.

Baba Ziauddin Siddique, 66, was shot on Saturday night near his car while he was leaving his son’s office. He died later in hospital.

Siddique’s death, an important politician who was a member of the partnership governing Maharashtra condition, in which Mumbai is the capital, has sparked a political blame-game.

Although the goal for the crime is still a mystery, some people will now recall the 1990s, when lawmakers and movie stars were frequently targeted by Mumbai’s underworld.

Police have made three arrests thus far, and they claim investigations are ongoing. According to local media reports, the men who were detained are members of a well-known gang whose head is now imprisoned.

Born in the northeast state of Bihar, Siddique migrated to Mumbai at the age of five with his father, a jeweler.

He began his political job in the 1980s as a student leader for the Congress party, and he immediately oversaw its youth movement in Mumbai. He finally became a member of the local government before becoming a minister in 2004 for around four years, winning three consecutive terms in a column.

In February, he left the Congress to join the Nationalist Congress Party which, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) and the Shiv Sena, currently governs state.

In addition to his political actions, Siddique even gained attention for his lavish iftar parties, which took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and attended by famous Bollywood actors.

It was at his iftar party in 2013 that superstars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan ended their much-discussed rift with a hug – that propelled “the annual Siddique affair into a must-watch event on the city’s social calendar”, Midday newspaper wrote in 2016.

The politician was shot as he approached his father’s vehicles in the active Bandra neighborhood.

Authorities said three guns fired six-seven sessions, hitting Siddique’s abdomen and neck, and fled the scene. A witness suffered additional injuries when a stray shot struck his foot.

According to prosecutors, they had recovered two guns and 28 life rounds of ammunition from the detained people.

Siddique had three police guards – local media reported his security was upgraded days ago – but the suspects reportedly distracted them by setting off a “smoke firecracker”.

Authorities have been in charge of the detained people for a year. They say they are on the lookout for their partners.

Senior officers standard Datta Nalawade stated that” we have set up 15 teams and are looking into who provided administrative support to the snipers.”

Although the police have not confirmed it, many sources-citing reports have linked the arrested males to the famous Bishnoi crew. Lawrence Bishnoi, the group’s president, has been charged in numerous cases, and he is currently imprisoned in Gujarat state’s high-security prison.

Within days of the killing, a person claiming to be a member of the gang posted on Twitter that they were behind Siddique’s dying. It has not yet been confirmed by authorities.

Bishnoi has been a prisoner since 2015, but he often appears on television. Some social media accounts that purport to be his or his partners have frequently posted his selfies from prison. He also gave interviews to a TV network in 2022, prompting an investigation.

It’s unclear how Bishnoi conducts the group’s activities while he’s in prison, and many of his studies on Bishnoi are based on police options.

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 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.

Siddique’s murder is the first significant politician’s murder in Mumbai since the 1990s, when prominent politicians and businesspeople were frequently killed by Mumbai’s legal groups.

According to local media reports, he had been subjected to a suicide threat two weeks prior, which resulted in an improvement in his protection.

The state government has been put on the backs of its own, with Maharashtra scheduled to hold council elections immediately as a result of his shooting within days.

Delhi’s former deputy secretary Arvind Kejriwal claimed the incident had scared not only the citizens of Maharashtra but the whole nation. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge described the crime as” a total loss of law and order in Maharashtra.”

Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has defended his administration.

“]The culprits ] will not be spared no matter who they are, be it the Bishnoi gang or any underworld gang … Those who are receiving threats, their safety is the state government’s responsibility and it will fulfil its responsibility”, he said.