Delhi police have arrested a 19-year-old man on suspicion of shooting the popular Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala at close range.
Ankit Sirsa is accused of being the youngest of five gang members who gunned down the singer in May, and was taken into custody over the weekend at a Delhi bus station alongside another suspect – Sachin Bhiwani – who is accused of helping the attackers after the murder.
Special commissioner of police HGS Dhaliwal told a news conference on Monday that Sirsa is accused of shooting Moose Wala six times, firing two handguns simultaneously. Police said he was also wanted in connection with two cases of attempted murder, one in Rajasthan and the other in Haryana state.
Last month, Delhi’s special cell unit arrested three people, including two alleged shooters, in connection with the killing of Moose Wala.
The accused were identified as Priyavrat alias Fauji, Kashish, and Keshav Kumar.
A police source told the Indian Express that the arrest of Priyavrat, accused of being the “main” shooter in the killing, gave up “significant” leads which eventually led to other alleged shooters. “They have been hiding for more than a month and were changing locations to evade arrest. Our team traced them and arrested them in Delhi,” the source was quoted as saying.
Moose Wala’s shooting came just a day after his security was scaled down by the state’s two-month-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government as part of a crackdown on “VIP culture”.
