Lawrence Bishnoi gang wanted to ‘target’ Shraddha Walkar murder case accused: Report
Shivakumar Gautam, the Lawrence Bishnoi gang member suspected to be the main shooter in the murder of Maharashtra politician Baba Siddique, has reportedly informed Mumbai Police the gang had also discussed “targeting” Aftab Poonawala, the accused in the Shraddha Walkar murder case.
“Shiva disclosed that Shubham Lonkar, a member of the gang, and other senior figures had expressed intentions to target Aftab. This intelligence has now been shared with the Delhi Police,” The Times of India quoted an official of the Mumbai Police as saying.
“However, the gang refrained from targeting Poonawala because of his heightened security,” the official stated.
Shraddha Walkar murder case
In May 2022, Walkar was allegedly strangled to death by Poonawala, her live-in-partner. He then chopped her body into 35 pieces; he stored Walkar’s body parts in a refrigerator and scattered the pieces across 18 days at various locations in Delhi.
The couple, who had relocated to the national capital from Bengaluru, were estranged from Shraddha’s family as her parents disapproved the relationship.
In January 2023, Delhi Police filed a chargesheet of more than 6600 pages in the case. Subsequently, a trial court framed the charges of murder and disappearance against Aftab.
Baba Siddique murder case
The politician was shot dead outside the office of his son, Congress MLA Zeeshan Siddique, in Mumbai on October 12. A leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which is a member of Maharashtra’s three-party ruling alliance, Siddique was known for his lavish ‘iftar’ parties that were attended by the bigwigs of Bollywood, the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry.
Superstar Salman Khan, a close friend of Siddique and a regular at the latter’s parties, has been threatened multiple times by the Bishnoi gang over a decades-old case. Veteran screenwriter Saleem Khan, Salman’s father, has firmly dismissed Siddique was killed because of his friendship with the actor.