india

Updated: Oct 22, 2019 03:21 IST

A 29-year-old man has been arrested from Maharashtra’s Nagpur in connection with Hindu Samaj Party founder Kamlesh Tiwari’s killing in Lucknow even as two alleged assailants who stabbed him to death last week remained on the run, a police officer said on Monday.

The officer said that the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested Sayyed Asim Ali from Nagpur and he was being brought to Lucknow for further investigation. He added that the Maharashtra ATS took Ali in custody on Sunday night and that he was in constant touch with the other accused in the murder.

The officer said that the Maharashtra ATS’s interrogation has revealed that he “played a very important role in the Kamlesh Tiwari’s murder” without specifying what it was.

He added that the Gujarat ATS also coordinated very well with the Uttar Pradesh in tracing the three alleged conspirators Faizan Yunus, 21, Mohsin Sheikh, 24, and Rashid Ahmad alias Rashid Pathan, 23, in the case and arresting them on Sunday.

Uttar Pradesh police chief O P Singh said that they were in touch with anti-terror squads of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, and Karnataka as well as central intelligence agencies for the arrest of the two assailants, Sheikh Ashfaq Hussain, 21, and Moinuddin Pathan, 23.

He said that he has spoken to police chiefs of Karnataka, Gujarat, and Maharashtra over the matter. “Moreover, the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force is already deployed to trace the killers,’’ he added.

Singh added that they would not rule out a terror angle to Kamlesh Tiwari’s killing on Friday last. He added that their probe suggests that the assailants also have links in Uttar Pradesh and some suspects in the state are still being questioned.

The Uttar Pradesh police have announced a Rs 2.5 lakh award each for information that could lead to the arrest of the two alleged assailants, said additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Awasthi.

The Uttar Pradesh police on Sunday said that they have seized items, including bloodstained clothes, belonging to the suspects in the murder of Tiwari even as his family handed a list of 11 demands to chief minister Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow and separately demanded capital punishment for the killers.

Tiwari’s mother, wife, and two sons spent around 30 minutes with the chief minister at his official residence in Lucknow on the day the police raided the Khalsa Inn hotel in the Lalbagh area of Lucknow where the suspects, who are on the run, were allegedly staying.

Tiwari was murdered inside his home on Friday in the fallout of “communal hate”, according to the police. He had filed a civil petition in the Supreme Court in 2011 challenging the Allahabad High Court’s decision to trifurcate the disputed site of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the case.

(With input from Nagpur)