Purulia, May 4: Suspected Maoists shot dead a CPM leader and injured another in a Purulia village this morning.

The incident took place in Bhomragarh in Bandwan, where CPM district secretariat member Rabindranath Kar and his wife Anandamoyee had been burnt alive by rebels in December 2005.

Today, Ganapati Bhadra, 45, a member of the CPM zonal committee in Bandwan, was shot several times in the stomach with a pistol.

Rampada Mandi, 42, who was riding pillion on Bhadra’s motorcycle, was also shot in the stomach but he escaped. He has been admitted to the Purulia district hospital.

Inspector-general of police (law and order) Raj Kanojia said Bhadra, a distant relative of Kar, was one of the complainants in the murder case. “We had offered him security but he refused.”

Mandi said he was accompanying Bhadra to Kuchia village, about 3km away, to attend a CPM meeting. “We started around 11.40am. When we reached the edge of the village, we saw three young men standing on the roadside.”

Bhadra was going slow as the road is rough. As he rode past the trio, one of them whipped out a pistol and shot him.

“Ganapati fell with the bike. I quickly rose to my feet and tried to lift him up as he lay writhing in pain. ‘Ami aar banchbona (I will not live),’ he told me. At this point, the youth shot at me. He also shot Ganapati a second time. I felt a searing pain in my stomach but somehow ran back towards Bhomragarh,” Mandi said.

When he turned around, he saw two of the assailants riding towards the Jharkhand border, about 10km away, on a bike. The third man had left, probably on a bicycle that was parked under a tree.

The bullet marks on Bhadra’s body suggest the youths had shot him two more times before leaving.

The CPM, which has called a 12-hour bandh in Bandwan, said Bhadra was on the Maoist hit list and had been threatened a year ago.