MUMBAI: A metropolitan magistrate court on Thursday remanded the two men and two women who allegedly supplied firearms and ammunition for the attack on actor Tiger Shroff to police custody till October 26.
The AEC has secured their custody from the Haryana police and they are being brought to Mumbai on a transit remand. The quartet – Kunal Sanjay, 21, Sumit Soraliya, 19, Radha Verma, 23 and Babita Rao, 23 – was arrested by the Delhi police special cell on October 20, two days after the attack on Shroff in Juhu on October 18. During the hearing, the Mumbai police crime branch informed the court that Anil Pandit, an alleged key member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, was the main accused in the attack on Shorff, and that sections 111 (organised crime) and 61 (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita had been added to the case. The Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of the crime branch which is investigating the firing incident told the court that the four accused had played a crucial role in commission of the crime by supplying weapons to the two alleged shooters, Phool Singh, 18, and Rehan Ansari, 18. Both were arrested on October 19 along with the alleged getaway biker, Hrithik Kumar aka Roshan Ramu Mahto, 22, from a Jaipur-bound train at Kota railway station. Kunal Sanjay had procured a pistol and 20 rounds of ammunition from Amritsar and handed these over to Babita Rao and Radha Verma in Delhi, who in turn brought the pistol and ammunition to Mumbai and supplied them to the alleged shooters through a minor boy, according to the police. The alleged shooters, who stayed in a hotel in Andheri East from October 14-18, till shortly before the firing incident, had provided forged documents to book the hotel room. On October 20, three more accused were arrested from Sonipat district in Haryana, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 10.
The police told the court that custodial interrogation of the four alleged firearms suppliers was necessary to ascertain where they had procured the weapons from and how exactly they were delivered to the shooters. The quartet also needed to be confronted with the alleged shooters and getaway rider to verify certain aspects, the police told the court. They used to leave the hotel early in the morning and return late at night and did not talk much to anyone, investigators said.
They were brought to Mumbai on transit remand, and produced before the Esplanade metropolitan magistrate court on Thursday. They are likely to reach the city on Friday, investigators said.
