Two jobless teens from Uttar Pradesh and a 23-year-old from Haryana shot dead Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar faction) leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddiqui in Mumbai on Saturday, police said.

The police have arrested two of the suspected killers — Gurmail Baljit Singh, 23, and Dharamraj Rajesh Kashyap, 19 — who officers said are from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, respectively. (However, Kashyap appears to have claimed in court that he is a minor.)

Police teams have been sent out of Maharashtra to find and arrest the third accused, Shiva Kumar Gautam, 19, also believed to be from Uttar Pradesh.

Sources in Uttar Pradesh police said Kashyap and Gautam had no criminal record and had left home for Pune to find jobs.

The police are verifying a social media post in which an alleged member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang has taken responsibility for the murder.

Siddiqui, 66, had last February defected from the Opposition Congress to the ruling coalition partner NCP. The motive behind his assassination, which comes in the run-up to the Maharashtra Assembly elections, expected next month, remains unclear.

The prominent Muslim leader, known for his closeness to Bollywood stars, was waylaid and shot just outside the office of his son, Congress MLA Zeeshan Siddiqui, at Bandra East around 9.30pm on Saturday. He was taken to Lilavati Hospital, where he was declared dead.

The incident prompted the Opposition to question the law-and-order situation in Maharashtra.

Deputy chief minister and NCP chief Ajit Pawar condemned the attack and said he had lost a good friend and colleague.

“We have lost a leader who fought for the minority community and championed secularism,” he said, adding that a thorough probe would be conducted.

Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis (BJP), who also holds the home portfolio, arrived at Lilavati Hospital sometime after the incident.

Sharad Pawar, chief of the other faction of the NCP that is in the Opposition, targeted home minister Fadnavis over the law-and-order situation. He asked the ruling alliance to take responsibility and quit.

Balasaheb Thorat, leader of the Congress legislature party in the Assembly, said the killing of a leader from the ruling alliance with Y-category security raised serious questions about law and order.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray alleged a “complete collapse of administration, law and order”.

While quitting the Congress in February, Siddiqui had not cited any reason, only saying that “some things are better left unsaid”.

“My journey was with Indira Gandhi-Rajiv Gandhi-Sanjay Gandhi. The current Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is like my father. But sometimes some decisions have to be made in personal life,” he had said.

Siddiqui had won the Bandra (West) Assembly seat three consecutive times — in 1999, 2004 and 2009. He was minister of state for food and civil supplies, labour and FDA in the state government from 2004 to 2008.

His father hailed from a village in Bihar’s Gopalganj district.

Bolly peacemaker

Siddiqui was close to several Bollywood stars, including Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Sanjay Dutt. He had earned praise for supplying life-saving medicines to patients during the Covid pandemic.

Siddiqui had played peacemaker between warring superstars Salman and Shah Rukh at an iftar party he had hosted at a five-star hotel in Mumbai in 2013, scripting one of the most viral moments of social media’s early days.

The two Khans had been on unfriendly terms since their spat at Katrina Kaif’s birthday party in 2008. The feud was so bitter that they avoided each other not only at private parties but also at public events.

At the iftar, Salman approached Shah Rukh, who was sitting next to Salman’s father and screenwriter Salim Khan, patted him on the shoulder and embraced his Karan Arjun co-star, ending their enmity.

A year later, Salman endorsed Siddiqui (then a Congress politician) when he spent an afternoon in Ahmedabad with the BJP’s then prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, during the kite-flying festival of Uttarayan.

“In our constituency, Bandra, where it’s my responsibility to cast a vote, the best people there are Baba Siddiqui and Priya Dutt. You have to give Modi Sahab the vote, I have to give my people the vote,” the superstar told his audience.

Siddiqui’s grand iftar parties were a starry affair attended by celebrity actors like the Khans, Urmila Matondkar, Katrina, Huma Qureshi, Sonu Sood, Sushant Singh Rajput, Ankita Lokhande, Kiara Advani, R. Madhavan, Aditi Rao Hydari and others. The guests would also include filmmaker Kabir Khan and celebrity designer Manish Malhotra.

Dutt ties

Siddiqui epitomised the symbiotic relationship between politics and the Hindi film industry.

He was brought into politics by the late Congress MP Sunil Dutt, who represented Mumbai North West five consecutive terms. It was Dutt, a former actor, who introduced Siddiqui to the world of Bollywood.

Dutt’s daughter and Congress leader Priya Dutt said she was “shocked” at Siddiqui’s murder.

“Baba was more than a political associate; he was family. To my father, Baba Siddique was like a son, and to me, he was a brother and a dear friend,” she wrote on X.

Siddiqui had joined the Congress as a teenager in 1977. Even while defecting to Ajit Pawar’s NCP, he acknowledged the role Dutt had played in his political career. He had later reciprocated when Priya entered politics.

“When I entered politics, he guided me through its ups and downs, offering his unwavering support. His loss feels like the departure of a family member,” Priya wrote.

After the news of Siddiqui’s assassination broke, Dutt’s son, actor Sanjay Dutt, was one of the first celebrities to visit Lilavati Hospital.

Salman and Shilpa Shetty, along with her husband and businessman Raj Kundra, were also photographed arriving at the hospital to meet Siddiqui’s family.