SIMI associate detained in Karnataka in connection with Kamlesh Tiwari murder

Bengaluru, Oct 22: A person has been detained by the Internal Security Division in connection with the Kamlesh Tiwari murder case.

Sources say that the person detained has been identified as Mohammad Zafar Sadiq and was picked up from Hubbali in Karnataka.

He was formerly associated with the Students Islamic Movement of India and was working at a workshop in the railway department.

When contacted a source said that his exact role is yet to be established.

Meanwhile, the probe has revealed that the accused befriended the deceased through a fake social media account.

The accused Ashfaq had reached out to Tiwari through a fake social media handle, which went by the name Rohit Solanki. Further it was also found that a meeting was scheduled on October 18, the day Tiwari was found killed. The police said that the accused had spent 30 minutes with Tiwari on the pretext of giving him sweets.

The police say that the two men from Surat, Gujarat- Sheikh Ashfaq Hussain and Pathan Moinuddin Ahmed had checked into a hotel in Lucknow at 11 pm on October 17.

The men left the hotel at 1.37 pm on October 18 after killing Tiwari inside his house in the Khursheed Bagh locality at around 1 pm on the same day.

The two men whose images have been captured on CCTV are yet to be arrested. Lucknow's senior superintendent of police, Kalanidhi Naithani said that the probe is on. We are also interrogating the hotel staff, he also said.

Further, the police have recovered the bloodstain kurtas worn by the two suspects. The saffron coloured kurtas, a towel, bad and other items too have been recovered from the Khalsa Inn hotel at the Lal bagh area in Lucknow.

The police also suspect that the murder may have been planned in Dubai. It has also been found by the police that the pistol used in the murder was purchased in Surat, Gujarat. The Dubai links are being established, police sources say.

Both the Uttar Pradesh police and the Gujarat ATS are in touch with each other. Both the UP police and ATS have carried out a spate of arrests linked to the murder of Tiwari.

The police say that the murder of Tiwari was a fall out of communal hate. UP's director general of police, O P Singh said that they had arrested three men in connection with the murder of Tiwari, the founder of Hindu Samaj Party.

The killers were traced through the bills of the sweets purchased from a shop in Surat. A total of five persons were involved in the murder, the police said.

Singh said that the three arrested have been identified as Maulana Sheikh, Faizan and Rashid Ahmed. Salim had radicalised the other men by showing a hate speech made by Tiwari in 2015.

Singh said that they had purchased the sweets from a shop in Surat and the same box was used to carry the weapons. Further, the police have learnt that two of the executors lived in Gujarat, but had links to Uttar Pradesh.