Puja immersion team youth held for shooting at businessman

A youth who worked as a food delivery person and was part of a Ganesh Puja immersion team has been arrested in connection with the firing that left a businessman injured on AJC Bose Road on Sunday night.

Police said the accused, Ronit Gupta, alias Bongi, 21, was riding a scooter when he got engaged in an altercation with the businessman, Pankaj Singh, and his two friends, who were riding a Hyundai Creta.

The man who fired at Singh was still at large.

The occupants of the Creta, which was moving in the same direction as the immersion team, had complained that they were getting stuck because of the slow-moving procession. Singh and his friends were on their way to another friend’s house in Kidderpore in southwest Kolkata from Mullickbazar in the south. 

As the Creta was stopped in the middle of the road, off Minto Park, Singh stepped out and allegedly slapped Gupta. The youth then called his friends from the procession and one of them allegedly fired at Singh.

A bullet was extracted from Singh’s chest at an Alipore hospital on Monday night. Hospital officials said that as part of the treatment procedure, the businessman was put on a ventilator for a day after the surgery.

CCTV footage has emerged that shows at least three two-wheelers around the Creta on AJC Bose Road before a man gets off the SUV and apparently slaps a man on a two-wheeler.

Then some men are seen rushing towards the spot, one of whom opens fire and runs in the direction of the Exide crossing.

The police said Gupta, a resident of Sevak Baidya Street in the Rabindra Sarobar area in south Kolkata, was picked up from the crossing of Hazra Road and Sarat Bose Road around 1.30pm on Tuesday.

“We are looking for the person who opened fire and other persons who were present at the spot,” said an officer. “All the men involved in the incident have been identified and efforts are on to arrest them.”

Brawls involving participants in immersion processions are not uncommon in the city. Processions often take up half of the carriageway, or even more, and cause inconvenience to commuters.

However, club members carrying arms and shooting people in the middle of one of the busiest thoroughfares of the city on their way to the immersion ghat has left many wondering about citizens’ safety and security. 

Several police officers said they could not recall another instance of members of an immersion procession carrying arms.

“This is extremely shocking that club members involved in a puja were carrying arms and shot a person on a road,” said a senior officer in Kolkata police.

Officers at Lalbazar said the procession was organised by a club in the Rabindra Sarobar area.