Dharamraj Rajesh Kashyap and Shiva Kumar Gautam, the two teens accused in the murder of NCP politician Baba Siddiqui in Mumbai on Saturday, belong to the same village in Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, police said.

While Kashyap has been arrested along with a third suspect, Gurmail Baljit Singh of Haryana, police teams have fanned out from Maharashtra looking for Gautam.

A team of police and revenue officials of Uttar Pradesh arrived at the homes of Kashyap and Gautam in Gandara village on Sunday to find out whether their families lived on their own land or were squatters.

“We don’t know why we were sent here but our job is to find out whether or not their properties are legal,” a lekhpal — a tehsil-level revenue official — said, asking not to be named.

The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has been known to demolish the properties of people accused of crimes — after declaring the properties as illegal — a practice on which the Supreme Court recently put a nationwide injunction.

“Shiva and Dharamraj have no criminal record in the district,” Bahraich superintendent of police Vrinda Shukla said.

“Their families lead simple rural lives. They (the youths) were in touch with their families in the village. We are trying to find out whether the families knew anything about their (alleged) criminal activities in Mumbai.”

A police source said the families had told officers that both Kashyap and Gautam had left home for Pune to find work in the construction business.

“They (the families) said they didn’t know when and why the two of them arrived in Mumbai,” the source said.

Gautam is the younger of two brothers, his father Bal Kishun, a farmer, said. Kashyap is the youngest of six brothers. His father Radhe Shyam is a fish seller and his brothers are street vendors.

Both Kashyap and Gautam are unmarried.

The three accused have been booked for murder and flouting the Arms Act and the Maharashtra Police Act, sources said.

Age test

A Mumbai court on Sunday remanded one of the two arrested accused in police custody till October 21, while directing a bone ossification test on the other to determine his age after he claimed to be a minor, a PTI report said.

After the test, the court will decide whether proceedings against the second accused would be conducted at a juvenile court or in the regular court.

The PTI report did not name the accused who claimed to be a minor but indicated that it was Kashyap. Uttar Pradesh police sources said both Kashyap and Gautam were 19 years old.

The crime branch had sought 14 days’ remand for both accused, saying it needed to investigate a possible international link. It has also to be ascertained whether political rivalry was the motive, public prosecutor Gautam Gaikwad told the court.

Advocate Sidharth Agarwal, appearing for both the accused, said the crime was “very sad and disheartening” but argued that the role of the accused had not been established.

Additional reporting by PTI