Lucknow, Aug 21 (IANS): Ayodhya’s local gangster-turned-politician Vikas Singh had played a significant role in providing shelter to members of Lawrence Bishnoi’s criminal syndicate, including Sachin and the two assailants.

Singh was arrested by the NIA from Lucknow on June 21.

“They had an extended stay at Vikas Singh’s farmhouse in Ayodhya’s Devgarh village, where they did some target practice before executing the killing of the singer,” they added.

The gang was planning to eliminate a political leader, but the plan changed at the eleventh hour, sources said without specifying any details.

Sachin Bishnoi, the key accused in rapper Siddhu Moose Wala’s murder case, had stayed at different places in Ayodhya and Lucknow before executing the murder on May 29, 2022.

The photos of Sachin along with his two accomplices, Sachin Bhiwani and Kapil Pandit, at different sites in these two cities went viral on social media on Friday.

Sources said a localgangster based in Ayodhya is under the NIA lens for harbouring the killers.

Sachin, cousin of Lawrence Bishnoi, the mastermind behind the murder, was extradited from Azerbaijan on August 1, 2023 and placed under NIA’s custody. He had claimed responsibility for them killing in a Facebook post.

Sources in the NIA said that a team of two senior NIA officers recently visited Lucknow and Ayodhya to probe the matter. The official said that Sachin Bishnoi and his two accomplices had stayed at various locations in these districts.

In 2020 too, following a double murder in Chandigarh that was allegedly orchestrated by the Bishnoi gang, the assailants -- Monu Dagar, Cheema, and Rajan -- had come to Lucknow and found shelter with Singh.

Two accomplices of Bishnoi, Deepak Surakhpur and Divyanshu, who were responsible for the RPG attack on Punjab Police intelligence headquarters in Mohali in 2022, had found refuge in Vikas Singh’s village.