New Delhi: In a breakthrough, the police have arrested four suspects involved in the murder of Sukhdev Singh Gogamedi, the president of Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena, a fringe group that claims to protect the interests of the Rajput community. The four suspects include Rohit Rathod and Nitin Fauji, who are accused of shooting Gogamedi at his residence in Jaipur on December 5, 2023. The other two are Ramveer, who allegedly assisted the shooters and a third unidentified person.
The police said that the four suspects were nabbed from Chandigarh late on Saturday night, where they were hiding in a room above a liquor shop in Sector 22A. They were tracked down with the help of their mobile phone locations, which they had foolishly kept on while fleeing from one place to another. The police said that the suspects had traveled from Jaipur to Hisar in Haryana, then to Manali in Himachal Pradesh, and finally to Chandigarh after committing the crime.
The suspects were brought to the office of the Delhi Crime Branch, where they were interrogated by a joint team of Delhi and Rajasthan police. They will be taken to Jaipur for further investigation and legal action. The police said that they have recovered two pistols and 17 cartridges from the suspects, which are believed to be used in the murder.
The police said that the motive behind the murder was personal enmity and not any ideological clash between two Rajput groups. Gogamedi was earlier associated with Karni Sena, another Rajput outfit that had protested against the release of the movie Padmaavat in 2018, alleging that it distorted the history and dignity of the Rajput queen Rani Padmavati. However, Gogamedi had parted ways with Karni Sena and formed his group, Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena, in 2019. The police said that they were probing whether there was any rivalry or animosity between the two groups that led to the murder.
Gogamedi was shot dead by two masked men who barged into his house in Jaipur on December 5, 2023, around 11 am. The assailants fired 17 rounds at him and also injured his guard Ajit Singh and his associate Naveen Shekhawat, who had brought the shooters to his house. Gogamedi was rushed to Metro Mass Hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. The guard and the associate are undergoing treatment at the hospital and are said to be out of danger. The police had registered a case of murder and attempted to murder the unknown assailants and launched a manhunt to nab them. The arrest of the four suspects is expected to shed more light on the case and bring justice to the slain leader.
