Mumbai Police are now looking for at least one person who hired and provided weapons to two shooters who allegedly shot and killed Iqbal Kaskar's (wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim's brother) driver Arif Sayyed (44) on Tuesday night on the busy Pakmodia street here. The State government said on Wednesday that Kaskar was not the target of the attack.
According to sources, Dawood's family has claimed that the attack was carried out by rival gangster Chhota Rajan.
Meanwhile, the two arrested persons — Inder Bahadur Lal Bahadur Khatri (27) and Sayyed Bilal Mustafa (29) — were remanded to police custody till May 26 by a local court here. While Mustafa is a Mumbra resident, Khatri is from Nepal.
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“They have been booked under sections 302 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code, and sections 3, 25, 27 of the Arms Act. The police recovered three firearms and 12 cartridges from them,” Public Prosecutor Satish Shinde told reporters.
The remand copy stated that the police also recovered five empty shells. Police officials said that they recovered Rs. 60 Nepali currency and Nagarik Dainik magazine from Khatri. Crime Branch officials said that they also recovered cash of Rs. 12,000 in Indian currency from the duo.
According to the First Information Report (FIR) registered with the J.J. Marg police station, two men approached Arif Sayyed who was sitting near the gate of Dambarwala building on Tuesday night at around 9.30 p.m. “They indulged in a small ‘hi-hello' talk with him just to keep him off guard. But they were definitely not personally known to Arif,” Crime Branch sources said.
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Rajkumar Vhatkar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations) said that according to the FIR, the shooters allegedly shot at Arif, who got injured and immediately ran inside the building. “As he [Arif] was climbing up the staircase, the shooters shot at him and ran away from there,” Mr. Vhatkar said.
“They fired six bullets at Arif,” a senior Crime Branch official said.
Mr. Vhatkar said that after the duo ran away, a mob followed it. “One person called Nazeem caught them. The people then beat up the duo. The Pydhonie police reached the spot and took them into custody,” he said.