Police search metal factory for clues in Udaipur tailor murder case

It is suspected that the sharp weapons used in the murder were manufactured at the factory

A Rajasthan police team on Thursday raided a metal factory in which one of the prime accused used to work to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to the gruesome murder of tailor Kanhaiyya Lal Teli over a post supporting suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.

The police suspect that the sharp weapons used in the murder were manufactured at the factory. It is not clear if the weapons have been recovered.

Preliminary investigations revealed that after hacking Kanhaiyya Lal to death at his shop and recording the act using a mobile phone on Tuesday, accused Mohammed Riyaz Attari and Ghous Mohammed had fled to the S.K. Engineering Factory in the Sapetia village on a motorcycle. They made another video claiming responsibility for the killing and released the two clips on the social media, after which they left for Deogarh in Rajsamand. However, they were intercepted by the police in Bhim.

On Thursday, the investigators went to the factory owned by one Shoeb, where Attari did welding work. His suspected links with a terror module, whose three alleged members were arrested by the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh police in March with 12 kg of explosives in Rajasthan's Nimbahera, are also being probed.

Attari belongs to Asind in Bhilawara and lived on rent in the Khanjipeer area of Udaipur with his wife and two children in a rented accommodation. The house owner, Mohammed Umar, told the police that the accused had shifted to the room on June 12. The family earlier lived in another house in the same locality. A day before the incident, the family left the place.

The second accused, Ghous, is from Bhim and also lived in a rented room with his family in Khanjipeer. The police have found that in 2014 he had gone to Karachi in Pakistan and that he was allegedly affiliated to the Pakistan-based outfit Dawat-e-Islami. It is alleged that on June 17, he had posted a video message in various WhatsApp groups declaring his intension to target people. However, the police did not come to know about it.

As the case has now been taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the two accused will be produced before a special court in Jaipur, where the agency will seek their custody to determine the identities of others involved in the conspiracy behind Kanhaiyya Lal's murder. Their mobile phones are being sent for forensic examination and to secure the digital data. Given that Kanhaiyya Lal had complained to the police about the threats he had received, efforts are being made to identify those involved.