Tiwari murder case: Lawyer held for driving killers to Nepal border

A Delhi-based lawyer was arrested here on Friday after he was cross-questioned with two alleged killers of Hindu outfit leader Kamlesh Tiwar, said senior state police officials who are privy to the investigation.

The lawyer, Mohammed Naved Raza Siddiqui, allegedly provided logistical support to the alleged killers after the crime, they added.

Assistant superintendent of police (West) Vikas Chandra Tripathi confirmed the lawyer would be booked under sections 201 (concealment of evidence) and 216 (harbouring criminals) of the Indian Penal Code.

The two alleged killers, Ashfaq Sheikh Hussain and Moinuddin Khurshid Pathan, are in two-day police custody since Friday morning. The lawyer was picked up from Bareilly on Thursday. He was brought to face-to-face with the alleged killers on Friday to reconstruct the entire sequence after the murder of Tiwari, leader of the little known Hindu Samaj Party.

Director general of police (DGP) OP Singh confirmed that the two killers and the lawyer were cross- questioned to extract more details and connect all missing links before and after Tiwari’s killing on October 18 at his home in Lucknow.

Another official privy to investigation said the lawyer helped the two killers sneak into Nepal through Lakhimpur Kheri’s Gauri Fanta area on the India-Nepal border on October 19. He said the lawyer, a Bareilly resident who practises in Delhi, drove the two killers to the border at Gauri Fanta in his sedan from Bareilly. He dropped them a few metres before the border, the officer said.

He said the lawyer asked the two alleged killers to mingle among two groups of local people crossing the border.

The lawyer later crossed the border too and picked up the two alleged killers again so that he could drop them at accommodation arranged in Nepal, the officials said.

The official said the two alleged killers stayed at the hideout in Nepal for several hours on October 20 where the lawyer helped them get two new mobile phones and SIM cards through his local contact. He said Naved helped the two killers to return to India through a local contact who dropped them again on Indian territory on his motorcycle on the evening of October 20.

The official said the two alleged killers returned to India with a plan to surrender after being convinced by Ashfaq’s wife and father.

“The two killers returned to Palia, Lakhimpur Kheri, by taking a lift on a tanker and hired a car from there to reach Shahjahanpur from where they boarded a train to Delhi and thereafter reached Gujarat by another train, Porbandar Express. The Gujarat ATS has said they arrested Ashfaq and Moinuddin after the duo reached its jurisdiction,” he said.

The official said so far the probe suggested that Naved was not aware of the plan before Tiwari’s murder, but he helped the two killers after the crime despite becoming aware of the killing afterwards. He said the lawyer came into contact with the two killers through Sayyed Asim Ali, who was arrested from Nagpur by the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad on October 20.

The police have arrested eight people in connection with Tiwari’s killing so far.