Patna, Sept. 10: Less than 15 hours after a reputable city-based doctor was gunned down on a Patna street in the afternoon, on Saturday morning a 20-year-old was shot near his residence.

Akash Dey is battling for life at Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH) after he was shot at on Bhoothnath Road. Around 11am, Akash, a student of a private college, was sitting at his shop that deals with ayurvedic products just 40 metres from his residence, when two unidentified men on a motorcycle came and saw him sitting alone in the outlet.

Five minutes later, two different persons, in their mid-twenties, came to the shop and had a short conversation with Akash. Minutes later, the locals of the area heard three shots been fired and as they rushed to the shop, Akash was seen lying in a pool of blood.

A relative of Akash said: "I opened the shop and Akash said he will look after it for a while. I left for work. It must have been 15 minutes and I got a call from my wife saying Akash has been shot. By the time I could reach, he was taken to Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH). After some treatment, the doctors asked us to shift him to the PMCH because he was critical. Doctors said two bullets hit him in the head and it's a miracle that he is still alive."

Akash's father, Indrajeet Dey, is a lensman with a media house and his mother Shoma Dey is a homemaker. "My son was not attending college for the past two months. He expressed desire to become a photographer. A few days back I came to know that he had a spat with a group of boys over some issue. He wanted to look after the shop which we opened recently till the time he got admission in a photography institute," his mother said.

The police learnt that Akash had problems with a group of people. "His mobile phone is being scanned. We are also checking the CCTV cameras in the area," Kamakhya Prasad Singh, the station house officer of Agamkuan said.

In connection with Friday's murder of 60-year-old doctor Afzal Ali, the police said two persons have been detained for probe.

Ali, a resident of Baans Kothi in Digha and in-charge of a hospital of the Employees' State Insurance Corporation, was on his two-wheeler while returning home. He was shot dead by unidentified men near the Industrial Training Institute under Digha police station jurisdiction around 8pm.

"A special investigation team has been formed under me to probe the issue," Patna SP (central) Chandan Khuswaha said.