The special team from Kanpur police, which swooped down on contract killer Mohammad Rafique?s Entally hideout on Tuesday morning, had to leave the city empty-handed on Thuursday.

On Wednesday, the city police had cited procedural reasons for not allowing the six-member Special Operations Group (SOG) to take custody of the Dawood Ibrahim aide.

Claiming that the move was to teach the team a lesson for its indisciplined act, a senior officer said: ?Officially, we have made the arrest and have taken him in our custody. Now they have nothing to do. Even though we can, we may not allow them to interrogate Rafique. The SOG will have to follow the procedure of filing a petition in court and seeking Rafique?s remand.?

So annoyed are the city police?s senior officers with the functioning of the SOG team that they have even contacted the top bosses in Kanpur SOG, objecting to the irresponsible and indisciplined act.

?We have told SOG officials that though their men were armed with AK-47s, they didn?t have the supporting documents, like an arrest warrant or a search warrant. They should have followed the legal procedures before sending a team to another state,? said a senior officer at Lalbazar police headquarters.

Asked whether they had spoken to the SOG members, the officer said: ?A sub-inspector is heading the team. How can we interact with such a low-level officer? When they were looking for a Dawood aide, who had murdered one of their colleagues and was carrying a reward of Rs 1 lakh on his head, the Kanpur police should have sent an officer of deputy superintendent rank, who at least knows the basic legal formalities.?

Calcutta Police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee also expressed his displeasure at the SOG team swoop. ?They wanted to conduct a raid, catch the criminal and whisk him away. This is not a professional approach. They should have contacted us and we could have provided them assistance. We need to have an official record when policemen from another state come here to conduct raids,? he said.

Mukherjee added: ?Had the team in plainclothes picked up Rafique and left the city without informing us, people could have mistaken it as an abduction at gun-point. We would then have been clueless as to who came and who was abducted.?