A court in Mumbai sent one of the accused in the killing of veteran politician Baba Siddique to the custody of Crime Branch till October 21. The court also ordered an ossification test for the second accused.
Siddique, who joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP in February this year after quitting the Congress, was shot dead on Saturday night by three armed persons at Kher Nagar in Mumbai's Bandra area just outside his son's office.
Two of the alleged shooters—Gurmail Baljit Singh, 23, from Haryana and Dharamraj Kashyap, 19, from Uttar Pradesh—have been arrested and a manhunt is on to nab the third accused, Shiv Kumar Gautam from UP.
Police produced the two accused before Mumbai’s Esplanade Court which sent Gurmail to 7-day police custody and also directed to present Dharamraj again after conducting an ossification test after he claimed to be a minor.
The court will then decide if proceedings against him will be conducted at a juvenile court or the regular court.
What’s ossification test?
Ossification test is a medical procedure that estimates a person's age by analyzing the process of bone formation based on fusion of joints between birth and generally up to the age of 25-30 years.
In crime investigations, it's a popular method for determining the age of the victim or the accused on the date of the incident. The test is crucial in cases involving juveniles.
In March, the Supreme Court, while denying the plea of juvenility preferred by a convict in a murder case, observed that to determine age, ossification test stands last in the order of priorities.