A Mumbai crime branch team recovered a gun and some live cartridges — used in the firing outside Bollywood star Salman Khan’s residence — from Tapi river in Gujarat’s Surat city on Monday. The search for another gun is underway, officials said.
The Crime Branch’s team had launched a search operation in the river earlier in the day.
During interrogation, the two arrested men – identified as Vicky Gupta (24) and Sagar Pal (21) – told the police that they threw the weapon into the Tapi river from a railway bridge, when they were fleeing to Bhuj in a train.
According to sources, the duo had arrived in Surat from Mumbai by road.
The two motorbike-borne men allegedly fired outside the Bajrangi Bhaijaan actor’s house, Galaxy Apartment, in Mumbai’s Bandra area on April 14, following which they fled the scene.
On the basis of technical surveillance, joint teams of the Mumbai and Kutch people nabbed the accused from a temple premises at Mata No Madh near Bhuj on April 16.
Subsequently, they were handed over to the Mumbai police for further investigation.
“A team of Mumbai police has come to Surat to recover the gun used by two men for firing at Salman Khan’s residence there. Our teams are assisting the Mumbai police in recovering the weapon,” Surat Police Commissioner Anupam Singh Gehlot told PTI.
Senior police inspector Daya Nayak, known as the ‘encounter specialist’, was also present with the Mumbai Crime Branch team at the time of the search operation in the Tapi river. The search was conducted with the help of local divers and fishermen, officials said.
As per the investigation, Gupta and Pal had reached Surat by road after firing at Khan’s house in Mumbai on April 14.
They then boarded a Bhuj-bound train from Surat railway station and disposed of the pistol in the Tapi river when the train was passing from a bridge in the city.
Prima facie, the duo’s main objective behind firing outside Khan’s residence was to create “terror”, police had said.
The Mumbai police have declared jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi and his younger brother Anmol Bishnoi as “wanted accused” in connection with the incident.
Gupta and Pal were allegedly receiving instructions from the two Bishnoi brothers, the Mumbai police have said.
While Lawrence Bishnoi is lodged in the Sabarmati central prison in Gujarat in another case, his brother is believed to be in Canada or the US, an official earlier said.
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