Mumbai: Ex-Balaji COO's murder linked to Kenyan polls

MUMBAI: The reported murder of Balaji Telefilms' former COO Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan and his friend Zaid Sami Kidwai by a disbanded special services unit in Kenya seems to be a fallout of their contribution to Kenyan president William Ruto's win in his bitterly fought election campaign, said an aide of Ruto. Khan and Zaid were missing since July.
Kenyan media and Ruto's aide said Khan and Kidwai were part of President Ruto's election campaign team."The abduction could be a fallout of their contribution... to Ruto's election campaign," The Star reported.
Kenyan newspaper reports say the bones and clothes of the two Indians have been recovered from a forest and sent to Nairobi for forensic analysis. Word is awaited on whether their remains will be repatriated to their families in Mumbai for burial.
Khan's acquaintances, who had petitioned PM Modi and the MEA to find him and bring him back, did not respond to TOI's requests for comment on news of his death. The television industry was also yet to issue a reaction.
Just a day earlier, his former employer Ekta Kapoor had issued an appeal to the Indian ministry of external affairs, and the Kenyan Red Cross seeking his whereabouts. "Our ex-COO of Balaji Telefilms has disappeared from Nairobi almost three months ago. I request MEA and Kenyan Red Cross to look into this," she wrote on Instagram. Actor Karan Kundrra, who was Khan's friend, also sought the government's intervention.
Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan, who lived in Bandra, was former vice president of Star TV and former COO of Balaji Telefilms. He resigned from his job in Mumbai in May, and went on a trip to Kenya in July. He posted travel updates, including the last from the Masai Mara safari, on his social media account. He was to return on July 24, but lost contact with family on July 21. He and Zaid Sami Kidwai, along with their local driver, were abducted from a nightclub in Nairobi on July 23. The special services force drove him away in an unmarked car, which was later found with its doors open and the engine still running. A police complaint was filed locally. Zaid's wife who had travelled with him to Kenya moved the court on July 28. Ruto's aide said on Saturday, that they were murdered in a 'killer waiting bey', a car that the special unit would use to kill Kenyans.
The Indian government was alerted to his disappearance by Khan's friends in Mumbai who also informed mediapersons around 70 days after he went missing. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi then said that a habeas corpus petition was filed in a Kenyan court. "The issue is sub-judice in the high court of Kenya. A number of hearings have taken place. Our high commission has been in continuous touch with the Kenyan authorities and some family members," he said.