UP police have arrested the mastermind behind a series of murders in UP’s Aligarh area. According to reports, Sabir Ali, a former councillor from Etah, has been arrested with four others for the murders of six people including 3 sadhus in the past month.
According to reports, Sabir Ali was formerly known as Dinesh Pratap Singh who had changed his name after conversion to Islam. Ali’s son Nadeem and three of their associates named Irfan, Salman and Yaseen have been arrested by the police. The police have recovered 4 guns, 12 cartridges, blood-stained clothes and mobile phones from their possession.
Upon investigation, a shocking and elaborate conspiracy has been revealed to be behind the murder spree. According to reports, Sabir Ali owned some land in Etah area and as land prices were not high back in 2016, he had donated two bighas of land for a madrasa and had appointed a cleric from Bihar named Shehzad to run the madrasa. However, after land prices went higher, Sabir wanted the land back and asked Shehzad to vacate it. After Shehzad refused to vacate the land Ali had reportedly tried to implicate him in a false case and when even that failed, he had allegedly hired a contract killer named Shahbaz to kill Shehzad.
Ali and his associates were arrested for Shehzad’s murder in 2016. According to the police, Ali had hatched a conspiracy to frame the key witnesses in the murder case named Haji Kesar, Jaan Mohammad, Firoz and Shoaib.
Acting on his plan, Sabir had deliberately targetted Sadhus because the CM of UP is a Yogi and the murder of Sadhus in the area was bound to attract media attention and prompt action from the police and framing the witnesses of the case against him would have been easier.
Starting from the murder of a Sadhu and a farmer in Pali police station area on August 12, Sabir Ali and his gang had killed a man and injured another in Atrauli on August 26. On September 15, Ali and his gang had killed a Sadhu and a farmer couple in Harduaganj who probably saw them committing the crime. As per police reports, Sabir Ali used to leave behind clues that pointed towards the witnesses. He had left behind phone numbers and had even called the phones of the witnesses from the phones of the victims.
Aligarh SSP Ajay Kumar Sahni has informed the press that Sabir Ali and his gang planned and targetted Sadhus living in lonely, rural areas. Three other accused in the murder cases, namely Mustakeem, Naushad and Afsar are absconding. UP police have declared a cash award of 25,000 for information on each of them.
While the case has got wide coverage in Hindi media and local newspapers, the mainstream English media has largely ignored it. Times of India was even criticised for using a headline that has neglected to mention the crucial angle in the gruesome series of murders that a gang of Muslim men targeted innocent Hindu sadhus to falsely implicate their own enemies.
News (as reported by all major Hindi dailies): A murder accused and former councillor Sabir Ali got a gang of criminals, incidentally all Muslims, to kill innocent sadhus in Aligarh temples to make Yogi govt look bad
Now read TOI headline: https://t.co/HkVJZr44dZ
— Swati Goel Sharma (@swati_gs) September 19, 2018
It is notable here that several places in UP and Haryana have seen a sudden surge of fatal attacks on sadhus living in temples. On August 15, two sadhus were tied up to their beds and beaten to death while another was brutally injured in a similar incident in Auraiya. it was just two days after the first two murders by Sabir Ali and his gang in Aligarh. in Haryana on August 20, two persons including the head priest were murdered and three others were injured in an attack on the Bhai-behen temple in Manglora, Haryana.
