NEW DELHI, May 30: The police on Monday detained a suspect in the murder of Punjabi singer and Congress leader Sidhu Moosewala, who was killed in Punjab’s Mansa town on Sunday evening, in Uttarakhand, police sources have said.
The suspect had been hiding among pilgrims who are part of the Hemkund Sahib yatra in the mountains when a joint Punjab and Uttarakhand police team detained him, they said, adding the suspect is being taken to Punjab now. The suspect detained from Dehradun is a member of Lawrence Bishnoi gang, who has claimed responsibility for the singer’s killing, sources have said.
Earlier, the Punjab police detained five men in connection with Moosewala’s murder. They were picked up from the Shimla bypass area and taken to Punjab for interrogation, a police official said. Moosewala was shot dead on Sunday by unidentified assailants in Punjab’s Mansa district, a day after his security cover was withdrawn by the AAP’s Balwant Mann government.
The five persons were picked up over suspicion of having links with the case, the official said. The five men were returning from Hemkund Sahib, a Himalayan Sikh shrine located in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, the official said. The Punjab Police will now ascertain the role played by them in the singer’s murder, the official added.
The post-mortem report available on Monday confirmed that over two dozen bullets, including one in the skull, were pumped into the popular singer by the unidentified assailants, sources said after a panel of five doctors concluded the post-mortem investigation on Monday.
The singer, who contested this year’s Punjab state polls on a Congress ticket, was shot dead while he was driving his SUV in Punjab’s Mansa yesterday. He was declared brought dead at the hospital. Sources say, excessive bleeding could have resulted in death. The viscera samples have been sent for further examination, the sources added. A forensic team is investigating the singer’s car at Punjab’s Mansa Police Station. The front and both sides of the car have multiple bullet holes indicating the car was intercepted from all sides and shooters fired multiple rounds.
The 28-year-old star’s father Balkaur Singh has said he was following his son in a different car along with two gunmen provided by the state and saw a car tailing his son. “On Sunday, my son left with his friends Gurwinder Singh and Gurpreet Singh in a Thar car. He did not take the bulletproof Fortuner and the two guards with him. I followed him in another car with the two armed personnel,” Singh has said in his complaint.
The singer was shot 30 times with an automatic assault rifle, the police said. Punjab Police chief VK Bhawra has said the killing seemed to be the result of an inter-gang rivalry. “This incident seems to be a case of an inter gang rivalry,” he told reporters, adding the name of the singer’s manager, Shagunpreet, had figured in the murder of a youth Akali leader, Vicky Middukhera, last year, who was a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. Shagunpreet had then fled to Australia. “Moosewala’s murder appears to be in retaliation to Middukhera’s killing,” the police chief said.
(Manas Dasgupta)