Despite taking responsibility for recent incidents of violence, including the firing outside actor Salman Khan’s residence in April this year and the recent gunning down of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique, the Mumbai Police have not been able to secure the custody of notorious gangster Lawrence Bishnoi presently jailed in a Gujarat jail.
Sources quoting officials said that following the shooting in April, Mumbai Police had sent several applications for Bishnoi’s transfer from Sabarmati Jail, which have been rejected in line with a Ministry of Home Affairs directive not to do so.
Bishnoi was shifted to Sabarmati from Delhi’s Tihar Jail in August 2023 in a drug smuggling case. Now, Section 268 of the CrPC has intervened, through which the Home Ministry passed an order that no state or agency can seek his custody for a year to maintain law and order.
According to reports, this order was initially supposed to run out in August 2024 and has been extended for a year. The Bishnoi gang came into the limelight after they claimed responsibility for the killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala in 2022 and the attack at Salman Khan’s house, Galaxy Apartments in Bandra, much earlier.
The gang, now largely operated by the brother of Bishnoi, Anmol, along with his associates Goldy Brar and Rohit Godara, had stated their intention to target Salman Khan because the actor was implicated in the shooting of Blackbucks in 1998 during the filming of “Hum Saath Saath Hain.” This act was considered a grave offense by the Bishnoi community, which considers blackbucks as sacred animals.
In the court appearance before 2018, Lawrence Bishnoi said:
“We will kill Salman Khan in Jodhpur. Everybody will come to know when we do it. I have not done anything as of now; they are accusing me of crimes for no reason.”
Just recently, one arrested gangster has come forward and accepted the responsibility for Siddique’s murder because it was staged as Siddique knew India’s most wanted terrorist, Dawood Ibrahim, and was close to Salman Khan. It also pointed to the death of Anuj Thapan, one of the suspects arrested in the earlier shooting, while in police custody.
