The Uttar Pradesh Police on Wednesday said they have arrested five men for allegedly killing six people in Aligarh district to frame a witness in a 2016 murder case, The Indian Express reported. The police said they were looking for three other accused and have announced a reward of Rs 25,000 for information leading to their arrest.

“They were arrested on Tuesday and produced before a local court in Aligarh, which sent them to jail,” said Harduaganj police Station House Officer Vinod Kumar Singh.

Two Hindu priests, a couple and two farmers were found dead across the district in the last one month, the police added.

Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar Sahni said the suspected mastermind of the murders – Sabir, who was earlier known as Dinesh Pal – was one of those caught, reported NDTV. “The accused use to drop a chit at the murder site with phone numbers written on them to confuse the investigators,” he said, adding that the hand-writing on the notes had been matched with those of the accused.

According to the police, a Muslim cleric named Shehzad was found shot dead in Etah in 2016. Shehzad’s son Shoaib was an eyewitness in the case. Sabir and his son Nadeem reportedly tried to make Shoaib change his statement after they got out on bail, the police said.

When Shoaib refused, the two allegedly recruited some of the other accused – Salman, Irfan and Yaseen – to carry out the murders to frame Shoaib.

“They tried to mislead the police in the murders,” said Atrauli area Circle Officer Prashant Singh. “They would leave contact details of the person they were trying to frame at the scene of the crime and even made calls to them from their victim’s cellphones to give the impression that they knew each other.”

Singh said the priests were killed allegedly to provoke religious sentiments. They had no motive to target the six, he added. “They simply wanted to frame the witness in Shehzad’s murder case and force them to change their statement.”