The Special Cell of Delhi Police has arrested two more inmates of Tihar jail in connection with the killing of gangster Tillu Tajpuriya inside the prison, officials said on Thursday.
The accused, identified as Chavanni and Attar Rehman, were also lodged in jail number eight of Tihar prison in which Tajpuriya was stabbed to death allegedly by four members of a rival gang, they said.
According to police, Chavanni is a local gangster and involved in some assault cases, while Rehman is a convict in a kidnapping case from Gujarat.
A senior police officer said that Rehman had allegedly helped the four assailants get rid of the weapons used in the murder while Chavanni had covered the CCTV camera with a bedsheet during the incident that took place on May 2.
The assailants had used improvised weapons to kill Tajpuriya, police said, adding they were seized.
"During investigation, we analysed the CCTV cameras and found that the four assailants who killed Tajpuriya were helped by more inmates. The investigation revealed that Chavanni and Rehman were present at the spot at the time of the incident and they had helped the four accused in hiding the murder weapon after the assault and covering the CCTV camera by using a bedsheet. However, the entire crime was captured in other CCTV cameras installed near the scene of crime and inside the cell,” the police officer said.
With the fresh arrests, the police have so far arrested a total of six inmates in connection with the murder.
Tajpuriya was killed allegedly by four members of the rival Gogi gang — Deepak alias Titar, Yogesh alias Tunda, Rajesh, and Riyaz Khan — who stabbed him “92 times”. The four attackers, lodged on the first floor of the prison, cut an iron grille and used bed sheets to climb down, police had said.
Tajpuriya was lodged in Tihar jail since 2016. He was an accused in the 2021 Rohini court shootout, in which gangster Jitender Gogi was killed, and was facing a threat to his life following the shootout.