Officers said the murder was committed on the orders of one Tombi Singh, member of the KRA’s rival unit, the United National Liberation Front (UNLF). Tombi Singh, the police said, is absconding, along with eight other Manipuri men suspected to have also been involved in the crime.

Joint Commissioner (Special Cell) Karnal Singh has said that the two Manipuri factions were fighting over the division of extortion money. That seems to be the likeliest motive, he said.

It is learnt that Tombi roped in his cousin Meitei (24) to execute his plan, while 25-year-old Malkit Singh from Punjab — Meitei’s colleague in the BSF — was hired for Rs 15,000 to hang around with the party when they were in the Capital. Officers said the group used the presence of a north Indian among them to throw the police off their trail.

A few days before the murder, both Malkit and Meitei, who were posted in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, took a train for Chandigarh where they were supposed to play a hockey match. They got off the train in Delhi on November 7 and stayed with Tombi till November 11, the night Hangshing was killed. Officers said Meitei had joined the BSF in 2001 while Malkit was a fresh recruit — in 2006.

The accused had picked up three mobile phones (numbers 9999895223, 9873315102 and 9899618957) from Hangshing’s house after the murder. They continued to use the phones even while in hiding. Sniffing the call records, the Delhi Police reached Jalandhar on December 21 from where they picked up Malkit. Meitei was arrested the next day from Chandigarh.

Karnal Singh said officers have been able to identify the eight other accomplices. “Teams have fanned out to several states on their trail,” Singh said. The police are also investigating whether these men were leaking out information on the BSF base to insurgents in the Northeast.

KRA chief Hangshing was undergoing treatment at AIIMS for nearly a month before he was killed. He was staying in a house in Hari Nagar, west Delhi, where he was hammered to death on the intervening night of November 11 and 12. Hangshing’s brother David and two others were present in the house at the time of the murder.

Karnal Singh said, “Once inside, the killers singled out Hangshing and took him to a separate room. The other three were only tied up because Hangshing told the assailants they had nothing to do with their group rivalry.”