Mumbai:

Two men have been arrested for opening fire outside Bollywood superstar Salman Khan’s residence in Mumbai, police said on Thursday, four days after the shooting at his farmhouse in Panvel in adjoining Raigad district. investigated.

Prima facie, the main motive behind the shooting outside Salman Khan’s residence at Galaxy Apartments in upscale Bandra area in the early hours of Sunday was to Create “terror”.

During custodial interrogation, the accused Vicky Gupta (24) and Sagar Pal (21) told Mumbai crime branch officials that they had Farmhouse Aprilita Farms conducted reconnaissance and shots were fired outside his farm four days later. He said he was residing in Mumbai on April 14.

The official said the 58-year-old actor often visited his farmhouse, about 60 km from Mumbai.

As part of evidence-gathering efforts, police are examining CCTV cameras installed at the farmhouse door and in nearby areas. He said the duo, who hailed from Bihar, had rented a house nearly 10 kilometers away from Harigram area in Panvel.

Both the accused were nabbed by the Mumbai Crime Branch in Bhuj in neighboring Kutch district of Gujarat within 48 hours of the shooting and both admitted their involvement in the crime, the official said.

He said police had received important information about the conspiracy angle of the incident and they were verifying the details and corroborating them with evidence collected so far.

He said the weapon used in the shooting, a handgun, was given to Gupta and Pal by two people at their rented home about 25 days before the incident.

The official noted that on the face of it, the main purpose of the firing appeared to be to cause “terror,” which is why the two motorcyclists chose the early hours of the morning to carry out their plan.

He informed that Vicky Gupta and Pal received cash payments from handlers for performing the tasks assigned to them, but their bank accounts were also being checked.

The official said Pal fired five shots from a moving motorcycle outside Salman Khan’s residence in his hometown in Bihar’s West Champaran district sometime after mid-March. Undertook shooting training and then arrived in Mumbai in the first week of April.

He said Mumbai police had detained 19-year-old Sonu Gupta from Chandigarh, brother of Vicky Gupta, and were investigating his possible role in the crime character of.

Sonu Gupta was one of many people questioned, the official said.

He said Vicky Gupta’s residence in Champaran West district was searched by the crime branch team, which also questioned his parents and another brother.

Police are also questioning Pal’s family, the official said.

He said that during the course of the investigation, it was also discovered that a Facebook account belonging to Anmol Bishnoi, the younger brother of imprisoned gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, was involved in the shooting Created from abroad three hours ago (around 5 am India time).

The official revealed that a post claiming responsibility for the firing was also uploaded to the same Facebook account.

He said the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the post was traced to Portugal and it was suspected that the email was uploaded using a VPN (Virtual Private Network), a tool that allows users to remotely access private networks for privacy and security purposes. .

During interrogation, the police were trying to find out how the two came in contact with Anmol Bishnoi and joined his gang, the official said.

Anmol Bishnoi has not been named as an accused in the case so far, but his ostensible role in the crime is obvious, he said.

Vicky Gupta and Pal were arrested from a village in Kutch district late on Monday night and appeared in a Mumbai court the next day. The police detained them till April 25.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)