NEW DELHI: Haryana Police in joint operation with Delhi Police has arrested two shooters from Goa in connection with the killing of the president of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) Haryana unit Nafe Singh Rathee.
Sources said that Ashish and Saurabh were arrested from hotel in North Goa. Both Ashish and Saurabh hail from Nangloi in Delhi and are associates of UK-based gangster Kapil Sangwan, who, through a purported social media post and took responsibility of killing Rathee.
They were flown to Delhi from Goa and then taken to Jhajjar in the afternoon, police officials in the national capital said. A senior Delhi Police official said Ashish, Saurabh, Nakul and Atul were the four who opened fire on Rathee and Kishan’s vehicle on February 25.
A team of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell (Southwestern Range) was involved in the operation in Goa, the official said. An official in Delhi said Sangwan is involved in around two dozen cases of extortion, murder and attempt to murder, and had fled to the UK in 2020.
Sources said Sangwan had provided arms and ammunition to the four shooters. Nakul and Atul had left the hotel in Goa on Saturday, they said.
Sangwan’s elder brother Jyoti Prakash alias Baba is lodged in the Tihar jail in a case of murder and could be interrogated by the Haryana Police in the coming days, another Delhi Police official said.
Jhajjar’s Superintendent of Police Arpit Jain said that both Ashish and Saurabh face criminal cases. “They were arrested from Goa. We produced them before a court and they have been taken on an eight-day police remand. The car used in the crime by the four accused was earlier recovered near Rewari railway station,” Jain said.
The motive behind the crime is being looked into, Jain told reporters in Jhajjar. Efforts to arrest the other two are on, he added.
“We have received evidence of foreign IPs and from technical evidence, it has come to the fore that a foreign-based handler was directing them,” the officer said in response to a question. Police said preliminary interrogation of the accused revealed that they were using cash payments while on the run. They said the duo took a train from Rewari to Ahmedabad and went from Mumbai to Goa in a taxi.