Bolpur, Feb. 7: A CPM supporter was last night riddled with bullets in a Birbhum village not known to be a Maoist hotbed but only 10km from Jharkhand.

Minutes before Basu Das, 37, was killed, someone had called him to enquire if he was at home.

There was banging on his door around midnight, but he did not open it sensing trouble. The attackers set the door ab- laze and the panic-stricken man unbolted it out of fear.

A labourer, he lived in the tin-roof house with his wife and three children. Two of them were at their uncle’s house next door. But Basu’s three-year-old daughter was sleeping with her mother.

“I ran with her to another room as three masked men rushed in,” Basu’s wife Jhoru, 32, said. “They fired at him at least seven times… five bullets hit his head. As my husband slumped to the ground, they shouted ‘aamader sangram cholchhey cholbey (Our struggle is on and it will continue)’.”

The attackers announced they had more people on their hit list before leaving the hut at Tarapur village, 280km from Calcutta.

Police said at least 10 people were waiting outside when the trio entered Basu’s house.

“The call on Basu’s mobile came after 11pm. The attack took place close to midnight,” said an officer of the local Khoirasol police station.

Basu’s brothers, who live in neighbouring huts, and other neighbours stepped out of their houses after the assailants had fled. They called the police. Basu’s 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son ran to their mother from their uncle’s house, where they had gone to sleep with their grandma.

“There were two bullet marks on the floor and the wall, possibly caused by shots that missed Basu. We found several spent cartridges,” said the investigating officer.

In 2007, Maoists had left behind posters claiming responsibility for a blast on the Sainthia-Andal railway tracks in Khoirasol. Another blast took place in the machine room of a mobile phone tower in December 2009, but no one owned up to it. A police officer said: “We can’t rule out a Maoist hand in last night’s murder. We had arrested a couple from Khoirasol in December 2009 on charges of having Maoist links.”

The CPM restricted itself to demanding the “arrest of the culprits” without blaming any outfit for the murder.

Birbhum superintendent of police Rabindranath Mukherjee said: “We are exploring all possible angles.”