The death of Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, known as Sidhu Moosewala, sent shock waves across the world, as family, friends and fans of the rappers mourned the tragic murder last month on 29 May.
The cremation of the Punjabi singer was held on 30 May, as the 28-year-old, born Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, was shot dead in a drive-by, by unidentified assailants, in his hometown of Mansa, a district in northern India’s Punjab state, a day after his security cover was withdrawn by the Indian government.
As 29 June marks a whole month since the murder, a press conference revealed police in the Indian capital, Delhi, have made arrests, as three persons, including two shooters, have been arrested in connection with the killing of Sidhu Moose Wala.
The two accused shooters have been identified as Priyavrat alias Fauji, 26, a resident of Sonipat in Haryana, and Kashish alias Kuldeep, 24, a resident of Jhajjar in Haryana, were arrested from Kutch district in Gujarat on Sunday.
Special Commissioner of Police H.S. Dhaliwal said that “Priyavrat was the head of the module of gangsters who led the team of shooters. He was in direct touch with a Canada-based gangster at the time of the incident”.
Referring to the gangster Goldy Brar, who is in Canada, the Delhi police have said he was in touch with the hitmen on the morning of the crime and gave them explicit instructions.
Priyavrat, who has been described as the “Main shooter and executioner of the murder”, as well as “Kashish alias Kuldeep, the second accused shooter, could both be seen on CCTV footage at a petrol station in Fatehgarh just before the incident,” Dhaliwal said.
The press conference on Monday also revealed the details of how the murder was planned and perpetrated.
Officials said that a person named Sandeep Kekda gave the initial intimation about Moose Wala’s movement without security following which the assailants got the final go-ahead to execute the murder.
The car in which Jagroop Roopa and Manpreet Mannu were travelling first overtook Moosewala’s car and abruptly stopped in front of it.
“Manpreet Mannu first came out of the car and started firing indiscriminately with his AK-47 rifle, injuring Moosewala who couldn’t drive his car further,” Dhaliwal revealed in the press conference.
The commissioner of Delhi Police’s Special Cell, Dhaliwal also alleged that the three men had carried out multiple recces before killing Moose Wala, as the rapper was hit by 24 bullets and died on his way to the hospital.
The third person who has been arrested, as the getaway driver in the incident, has been identified as 29-year-old Keshav Kumar, a resident of Bhatinda, Punjab.
On his involvement with the murder, Special Commissioner Dhaliwal said, “He acted as a facilitator and received the shooters just after the shootout in an Alto car”.
Keshav, in a joint enterprise, accompanied the shooters to Mansa on the day of the incident, during reconnaissance and also during the previous attempts.
Apart from arrests that have been made, the police have also recovered a large cache of arms and explosives.
Dhaliwal also made the startling revelation that the assailants would have used grenades to kill the singer in case the guns didn’t work.
“We recovered eight grenades along with an under-barrel grenade launcher. The high explosive grenades are designed for use with grenade launchers. The grenade launcher can be mounted on AK-47 assault rifles,” he said.
Apart from grenades, the police also found nine electric detonators, one assault rifle along with 20 rounds, three sophisticated star pistols of .30 bore, 36 rounds of 7.62 mm star pistols and parts of AK series assault rifle, as Dhaliwal added “the grenades were “a back-up in case the weapons did not work”.
The police in Delhi and Punjab state, where Moose Wala lived and died, have been jointly investigating and have so far, made over a dozen arrests during the investigation.
The motive behind Moose Wala’s killing is still unclear and even the Delhi Police refrained from divulging any further details, saying that their duty is to stop organized crime.
“It is a mandate of the Special Cell to stop organized crime and check if there is any terror involved in it. Whenever a big crime takes place anywhere in the country, we proactively start probing it so as to prevent a similar kind of incident that might occur in the national capital,” Dhaliwal said.
