Jamshedpur, Aug. 4: Suspected Naxalites gunned down a JMM leader and injured his contractor friend in Patamda, East Singhbhum, today.

Doren Singh Munda, a central committee member of the JMM, and Puran Singh Sardar were having a chat at a neighbour’s house in their native Kumari village around 11.30am when two youths approached them. They asked Sardar where Munda lived. No sooner did the contractor point to the JMM leader, they flashed a gun and started firing indiscriminately.

While Munda was killed on the spot, Sardar took bullets in his right shoulder and left leg. He is recuperating at Tata Main Hospital. Eyewitnesses said the duo disappeared into a nearby forest after the shooting.

A police team led by DSP S.K. Srivastava has reached the spot with two anti-landmine vehicles from Bhadodih, where a long-range patrolling is underway after Saturday’s arson. SP Naveen Kumar Singh said it appeared that Munda, also a civil contractor who undertook check dam projects, was killed by Naxalites. “But we are not ruling out business rivalry.”

Sardar, however, stressed that the men were indeed rebels. “One was bulky, the other lean. They appeared to be local residents and yet I could not recognise them,” he said.

Panic gripped villages in Patamda soon after the news of the attack on a JMM man spread. Senior party leader and former revenue and land reforms minister Dulal Bhuiyan visited the spot.