The Uttar Pradesh police on Tuesday (18 September) said it has cracked the case of sadhus’ murders in Aligarh, Dainik Jagran has reported. The police said they have nabbed five members of a gang from Uttar Pradesh’s Etah that carried out murders at the behest of Sabir Ali, a former councillor, who is an accused in the murder of a Muslim cleric in Aligarh in 2016.

The police have revealed that these murders were attempts to implicate witnesses testifying against Sabir. He is also known by his other name Dinesh Pratap and had converted from Hinduism to Islam 35 years ago.

As per the police, they targeted sadhus as they believed that sadhus’ murders would be promptly investigated under Yogi and this way they could easily implicate the witnesses and also give the government a bad name.

The gang murdered two sadhus and a farmer on 12 August. They assaulted another sadhu in Atrauli on 26 August but failed to kill him. They, however, killed a farmer. They again attacked a sadhu on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday. The sadhu survived but they killed a farmer and his wife who had spotted them hiding in their field.

After every murder, the gang would call the witnesses in the Muslim cleric’s case from their victims’ mobiles to implicate them, Times of India reported. They would also leave chits with names and numbers of the witnesses at the scene.

Three members of the gang are absconding and the police have declared a reward of Rs. 25,000 on each of them. The Director-General of Uttar Pradesh Police, Agra Zone’s Additional Director-General, Aligarh’s Deputy Inspector-General and Senior Superintendent of Police have awarded the police team that cracked the case with Rs. 50,000, Rs. 30,000, Rs. 25,000, and Rs. 20,000 respectively.