Sheikh Sajjad Gul, the man who is identified behind the death of the renowned journalist Shujaat Bukhari had been earlier arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi police with a large number of explosives including RDX and detonators in 2002.
The other two killers identified by the Jammu and Kashmir police are Muzaffer Ahmed alias Talha and Azad Ahmed, who is from south Kashmir, and Naveed Jatt alias Hanzullah, a Pakistan national. With the arrest of Sajjad, a Lashkar militant and his associates, Mehrajuddin Peer alias Hilal and Firoz Ahmed Sheikh alias Abu Mansoor, from Nizamuddin railway station, police had prevented their plans to carry out serial blasts in Delhi.
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After Sajaad was arrested he was kept in a high-security cell in Tihar Jail and during the questioning, he told that he rented a flat in South Delhi’s Jangpura area and did a recce of possible targets. He stayed in Delhi for a few days and after that moved to Mumbai where he met other Lashkar operatives who belonged to Sopore and Srinagar.
Upon his release from prison, Sajjad went back to Kashmir and then to Pakistan in March 2017 on a passport obtained with forged documents. Naveed Jatt, another accused made an escape from the Srinagar hospital in February this year and killed Shujaat Bukhari on the eve of Eid and he is on the list of ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’. Jutt, was one of the three who pulled the trigger and killed Bukhari.
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Shujaat Bukhari, the editor of Rising Kashmir, was shot dead on June 14 when he left his office and got into his car to go to an Iftaar party. The three killers, who came on a bike, opened fire at the 52-year-old journalist and his two security guards. All of them died; the journalist was hit with 17 bullets.