Salman Khan firing case: Two men nabbed from Punjab sent to police custody

Two men arrested from Punjab in connection with Salman Khan firing case were on Friday produced before a Mumbai court that remanded them to police custody till April 30, the PTI reported.

Subhash Chander (37) and Anuj Thapan (32) were produced before a magistrate`s court in Mumbai.

The crime branch had on Thursday arrested the duo, who had allegedly provided weapons and cartridges to the shooters, from Punjab.

The police informed the court that the accused were key persons in the crime and were arrested based on technical evidence.

They need to be interrogated to find out who supplied them with weapons and asked them to give the same to the two shooters arrested earlier, police said, according to the PTI.

Mumbai Police have alleged that Chander and Thapan had come to Panvel on March 15 to hand over two country-made pistols and 38 live rounds to the shooters Sagar Pal and Vicky Gupta. The duo were the shooters arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch for shooting outside Salman Khan`s residence in Bandra west.

The court had on Thursday remanded Pal (21) and Gupta (24) to police custody till April 29.

Apart from these four accused, the Mumbai Police have declared jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi and his younger brother Anmol Bishnoi as wanted accused in the Salman Khan firing case.

Appearing for the accused, advocate Ajay Dubey submitted that Chander and Thapan had not provided weapons to the other accused or visited Panvel, and they had no connection to the Bishnoi gang, according to the PTI.

All charges against them are baseless, and they were falsely implicated in the case, he said, as per the PTI.

Gupta and Pal allegedly fired outside 58-year-old Khan`s house at the Galaxy Apartment in Bandra in the early hours of April 14 before fleeing the spot on a motorbike.

They were apprehended from Mata No Madh village in Gujarat`s Kutch district on April 16.

The Mumbai Crime Branch team led by encounter specialist Daya Nayak later recovered two pistols, magazines and bullets from the Tapi river in Gujarat during a search operation to recover weapons allegedly used in the firing.

(with PTI inputs)