In an audio recording obtained, one of the prime accused in Kamlesh Tiwari murder case, Ashfaq, who is now in police custody, is heard speaking to his wife and father, soon after he killed Tiwari on October 18.
The wife, who sounded perturbed on the phone, inquires about Ashfaq’ well being and urges him to come back home. She is heard asking him where he is at that moment, to which Ashfaq replies that he is en route Lucknow and he was earlier in Shahjahanpur.
His wife asks as to why is he going to Lucknow and not returning home. She then hands over the phone to Ashfaq’s father who informs him that Gujarat ATS had interrogated his family. The father again assures Ashfaq that he has his family’s backing and asks him to come back home. At this point, Ashfaq is heard telling his family that he is using someone else’s phone and that he will call them back.
During the conversation, it seems apparent that Ashfaq’s family is aware of the crime he has committed. But what remains a mystery here is why Ashfaq tells his family that he is going to Lucknow. Whether he is trying to mislead his family by giving them his wrong whereabouts as he fears that his phone was being tapped or whether he wanted to surrender in Lucknow after committing the crime remains a mystery.
Read: Moinuddin and Ashfaq went to a nearby Lucknow hotel after murder, discarded Bhagwa clothes recovered
On October 22, Gujarat ATS has nabbed Ashfaq and Moinuddin, the two prime accused in the case from Gujarat-Rajasthan border. According to a press note released by the Gujarat Police, a team led by DIG ATS Himanshu Shukla had apprehended Ashfaqhussain Jakirhussain Shaikh, who worked as a medical representative in a pharma company and Moinuddin Khurshid Pathan, who worked as a food delivery boy with Zomato. Ashfaq had forged his colleague’s Aadhaar to pose as Rohit Solanki, a Hindu rights activist, to gain the trust of Tiwari.
The duo was caught after they approached their family members after they ran out of the money they had.
The radical Islamists, Ashfaq and Moinuddin had checked into a Lucknow hotel from where the Police had recovered Bhagwa clothes that were worn by them. While one CCTV footage of Ashfaq and Moinuddin checking into the Lucknow hotel had emerged, another CCTV footage also emerged, in which one could see that Moinuddin and Ashfaq have changed into their Bhagwa clothes and are leaving the hotel to commit the brutal murder of Kamlesh Tiwari.
On 18th October 2019, Hindu Samaj Party leader Kamlesh Tiwari was brutally murdered for his 2015 comments where he had called Prophet Muhammad gay. The Uttar Pradesh police and Gujarat ATS sprung into action to blow the lid off a Surat-based Jihadi group that was indoctrinated by one of the accused who planned the murder, Maulana Mohsin Sheikh. Two other conspirators, Rashid Pathan and Faizan Sheikh have been arrested on late Tuesday evening from Surat in Gujarat in connection with the murder.
While Ashfaq and Moinuddin will be handed over to the UP Police for further investigation, the other three accused have already been sent to UP on transit remand.
Today, Gujarat ATS arrested one maulana named Sayyed Kaifi Ali of Bareilly on charges of helping the killers of Tiwari which took the total number of arrests to six.