By IANS,
New Delhi: A Delhi court Tuesday sent three men who allegedly killed BSP leader and business tycoon Deepak Bhardwaj to 10 days police custody.
Metropolitan Magistrate Prashant Sharma sent Sunil Mann, Purushottam Rana and Amit to police custody till April 12 for questioning.
The three accused, presented in court with their faces muffled, refused to undergo an identification parade sought by police.
“The investigating officer has moved application for grant of 10 days’ police custody of the accused so that various evidences could be collected, namely arrest of main conspirator/kingpin,” said the court.
“Also, police want to carry out arrest of co-accused from their possible different hideouts, the recovery of weapon of offence, discovery of motive of the crime and recovery of the vehicle used in commission of crime,” said the court.
Police said Mann and Rana were the assailants who shot the victim while Amit was the driver of the car in which they had gone to the crime scene.
The investigating officer told the court that Rana told them that the main accused in the case was a man known as “swamiji”, who was yet to be arrested.
Police said they planned to take the accused to Haridwar in Uttarakhand, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and Jhajjar in Haryana to establish the chain of events which lead to the crime.
Mann and Rana were arrested Monday minutes before they tried to surrender in a court in Patiala House Court complex in central Delhi. Amit was arrested Sunday, police said.
Police said Rana disclosed that the weapons used in the crime were procured by them from a man identified as Raju and the pistols were thrown in a canal after the offence.
Rana said he could get the pistols recovered from the canal, police said.
Police told the court that the entire conspiracy had to be established and the motive behind the murder was yet to be ascertained.
The cellphone SIM cards used by the accused had been recovered, police said.
During the proceedings Mann’s advocate moved an application saying his client be medically examined every 12 hours and the counsel should be allowed to meet him also every 12 hours.
The public prosecutor told the court that their probe into the case is going on and the police is investigating the case from all possible angles.
Bhardwaj, a realtor and the richest Delhi candidate in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, with declared assets of over Rs.600 crore, was shot dead March 26 around 9 a.m. at his 35-acre farmhouse in Rajokri in south Delhi.
The killers entered the farmhouse on the pretext of meeting Bhardwaj. He was shot in the head and chest.