Man who attacked Delhi CM Rekha Gupta had plans to kill her, brought knife: Police

New Delhi: The prime accused in a recent attack on Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta had allegedly planned to kill her and procured a knife soon after arriving in the national capital, a police officer said on Monday.

Police sources said the accused's friend Tahseen Syed, who has also been arrested in the case, knew about the conspiracy and was in constant touch with him before the attack.

"Accused Sakriya Rajeshbhai Khimji had come with a plan to kill the chief minister and procured a knife for the purpose from a vegetable cart outside the New Delhi railway station. However, when he saw heavy (police) deployment during the (chief minister's) Jan Sunwai programme, he dumped the knife somewhere in Civil Lines," the senior police officer said.

He added that the knife has been found from the Civil Lines area.

Syed was brought to Delhi from Gujarat's Rajkot on Friday night for further questioning and was made to confront Khimji to verify facts. He was taken into custody on Sunday.

Khimji had allegedly sent a video of Gupta's Shalimar Bagh residence to Syed, while the latter had sent him Rs 2,000 and was in constant contact with him before the alleged attack on the chief minister during a "Jan Sunwai" programme at her Civil Lines camp office on Wednesday.

Sources also claimed that Khimji had gone to the Supreme Court before heading towards Gupta's personal residence at Shalimar Bagh.

Khimji, an autorickshaw driver, has five cases of assault and possession of liquor against him that were lodged between 2017 and 2024 at Rajkot's Bhaktinagar police station. Multiple preventive actions were also taken against him, the sources said.

These actions were taken in 2017, 2020 and twice in 2022 under various sections of the Gujarat Prohibition Act and the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Khimji was also externed once in 2021 under section 56 of the Bombay Police Act.

According to the facts of a 2017 case, Khimji hit a person on his head with a sword and beat him up with a bat used for washing clothes. In 2022, after he had a fight with his wife, he had inflicted injuries on his own head with a blade to terrorise the family members. He got nine stitches then.

Khimji was into illicit liquor smuggling as well. The Delhi Police is questioning more than 10 people in connection with the attack on Gupta, including Khimji's friends and family members in Rajkot.

Khimji told the investigators that he had planned to stage a protest at the Ramleela Ground here against the Supreme Court's order on relocating stray dogs, similar to how social activist Anna Hazare had agitated over the corruption issue.

"If required, we can also take him to his native place in Rajkot as part of the investigation," a source said. Khimji's mobile phone has been sent for a forensic examination to ascertain if he deleted any crucial information before the assault.

Khimji was sent to a five-day police custody by a court. He has told police that he went to the chief minister's "Jan Sunwai" programme to raise the issue of stray dogs.

According to the Rajkot Police, Khimji went to Delhi from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh on August 19 to take part in a protest against the apex court's ruling on stray dogs.