Calcutta, April 12: Police today detained two persons suspected of having hired the gunmen who killed nursing home owner and small-time CPM leader Subid Mullick at Baruipur on Monday night.

The prime suspects, a 40-year-old man and his nephew, allegedly trafficked in young women and are believed to have plotted Mullick’s murder after he threatened to expose them.

The two suspects were interrogated through the day but hadn’t been formally arrested till tonight.

Mullick, a CPM local committee member in Howrah district, ran his nursing home in Baruipur, where he also practised alternative medicine.

As he headed home in a rickshaw van on Monday night, three youths arrived on the scene in a taxi and pumped four bullets into him.

Police detained the taxi driver for questioning yesterday and seized his vehicle.

Mullick stayed at a rented house with his second son at Panchghara, close to the nursing home, while the rest of his family lived at Chitnan in Howrah’s Joypur area, about 60 km from Calcutta.

The police believe that Mullick had angered the two prime suspects, who are from Uluberia, by telling them they must stop their girl-running business. He had apparently drawn the local police’s attention to the racket.

The duo would allegedly earn the trust of young women by promising them marriage or jobs, and later sell them off to the flesh trade in various states.

“Since then, they plotted to kill Mullick,” a police officer investigating the case alleged.

After the murder, the duo disappeared from their home. They were nabbed in a nightlong raid in Uluberia, the additional superintendent of police (rural), Howrah, Basab Dasgupta, told reporters. “We are interrogating them and hope to solve the case soon.”

The police are also following up on information that Mullick had been attacked a week ago during elections at a local school after protesting against malpractice.

Today, the local CPM organised a condolence meeting at Chitnan.