Lucknow: The Lucknow police have filed a charge sheet against 13 persons in the murder of Hindu leader Kamlesh Tiwari.
Kamlesh Tiwari was stabbed and shot dead inside his office-cum-residence in Khurshid Bagh area on October 18.
Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Vikas Tripathi said that the two main accused, Ashfaq and Moinuddin, had been charged with murder while 11 others had been booked under other provisions of IPC, including sheltering accused, cheating, dishonesty, and criminal conspiracy.
The 13 persons named in the charge sheet are Ashfaq, Moinuddin, Rashid Pathan, Faizan, Mohsin Sheikh, Sayeed Asif, Mohd Naved, Raees Ahmad, Asif Raza, Kamran, Yusuf Khan, Zafar Sadiq, and Kaifi Ali.
The charge sheet states that the accused conspired to kill Kamlesh Tiwari who had made a disrespectful remark against Prophet Mohammad in 2015.
The Special Investigation Team set up to probe the murder stated that the accused had brought a box of sweets in which a firearm was kept. They had established contact with Tiwari through a fake identity on Facebook and had projected themselves as Hindu leaders.
Around noon on October 18, the main accused came to visit Tiwari in his office located on the ground floor of his residence. They stabbed him 19 times and then shot him dead.
The assailants, interestingly, had made no efforts to conceal their identity. They gave their original Aadhaar cards at the hotel they had checked into and their faces were clearly visible in the CCTV footage.
The ATS Gujarat and the SIT arrested the accused on the basis of electronic surveillance from Karnataka, Maharashtra and various districts of Uttar Pradesh.
