Udaipur-Amravati killing: Meeting held between NIA chief & Home Minister Amit Shah

On Monday, NIA chief Dinkar Gupta held a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah at his office in Delhi.

This comes days after the Ministry of Home Affairs directed National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take over the probe of the brutal killings in Rajasthan's Udaipur and Maharashtra's Amravati.

• On June 28, a tailor Kanhaiyalal Kumar was beheaded by two men inside his shop in Udaipur in the broad daylight, while a chemist shop owner Umesh Kolhe was killed by several men in Amravati on June 21.

In Amravati killing case, a district court in Amravati sent the key accused and Irfan Sheikh, the mastermind in the murder case to police custody till July 7. The accused, identified as Irfan Sheikh, was arrested by Amravati police in Nagpur on Sunday. The six accused have been identified as Mudassir Ahmad (22); Shah Rukh Pathan (25); Abdul Thoufique (24): Shoaib Khan (22); Atib Rashid (22) and Yusufkan Bahadur Khan (44).

In the Udaipur case, the assailants identified themselves in the video as Riyaz Akhtari and Chouse Mohammad. In the video, Riyaz was seen attacking 47-year-old Kanhaiya Lal with a sharp-edged weapon while the other, Ghouse, recorded the crime on his mobile phone.

Investigators so far believe that both the chemist and the tailor were killed allegedly in retaliation for a social media post supporting BJP's Nupur Sharma who had made controversial comments on the Prophet in a television debate.

NIA on Thursday said it suspects the role of a "terror gang and not a terror outfit". The anti-terror agency, however, made it clear that there is a role of a bigger gang behind the brutal killing and that it was not just an act done by only two persons, who were arrested by state police after the incident.