Chandrika Rai at Maujipur village in Fatuha on Friday. Picture by Sachin

Patna/Chennai, Feb. 24: At least one of the “bank robbers” shot dead by police in Chennai yesterday is alive and living in a village near Patna, working as a truck driver to earn his daily bread.

As allegations of a fake encounter became shriller, Bihar police said they had begun the process of verifying the identities of four of the five men gunned down by the Chennai police at midnight on Thursday. The Chennai police had said yesterday that four of the five “bank robbers” hailed from Bihar while the other man was from Bengal.

Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Alok Kumar said this evening that at least one of the men was alive and is at present residing in his village.

“One of the men has been identified as Chandrika Rai, son of Kripal Rai, resident of Maujipur village of Fatuha, 25km from Patna. The police carried out the verification today and Chandrika was found to be still living in the same village. He is a driver by profession. The whole claim (of the Chennai police) is very confusing indeed,” Kumar told The Telegraph.

The SSP said doubts had surfaced about the existence of the second person, Vinod Kumar Sah, the alleged gang leader. The Chennai police say Vinod is the son of Madan Sah and hails from Raipura village, also in Fatuha. “A police team had been sent and it was found that no one by the name of Vinod Kumar Sah, son of Madan Sah, has ever lived in that village,” Kumar said. SRM University has also denied that Vinod Sah, was its former student.

The police are in the process of verifying the identities of two other men named by the Chennai force. One of them is Harish Rai, son of Panchi Rai, a resident of Purushottampur village in Raghopur block of Vaishali district. Vaishali superintendent of police Upendra Kumar Sinha told The Telegraph that the verification process was on. “A police team has been sent to the village. The verification process is on and no comments can be made unless it is complete,” Sinha said.

Nalanda superintendent of police Jitendra Singh Rana said the verification of the fourth person named, Binay Prasad, son of Jamun Prasad, was complete. “He hails from Bagpar village under Koraparsurai police station of Nalanda. The police have located his wife and his 10-year-old son in the village. The family said Binay had gone to work in Chennai quite sometime ago and had returned before Saraswati Puja (which fell on January 28) this year. But he headed back to Chennai after the puja. His voter ID card, which was sent to us from Chennai, is original. The local police station says no FIR has ever been lodged against the man,” Rana told The Telegraph.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar said he has sought a report on the alleged encounter. “I have asked the DGP and the home secretary to take detailed information about this matter and constitute a probe. There are several discrepancies in the facts which have come to light in connection with the identities of the men. There have been instances when some could not be found at the address given and another person is still living. In such a situation, a detailed probe is required,” Nitish said.

The Chennai police said they are also keen to establish the identities of the persons gunned down. “We released their names based on the four voter ID cards and one driving licence we found in the house. They could be fakes and hence we have sent the photos from the ID cards and that of the deceased (from the mortuary) to Bihar police to check any possible leads about their true identity,” explained Chennai police commissioner J.K. Tripathy.

Chennai police say the ID cards could have been faked to enable the gang members to book train tickets and also show some kind of proof to rent houses. They have also passed on to their Patna counterparts phone numbers the alleged robbers had called from their cell phones to their accomplices in Bihar. Since the cell phone records of the deceased also showed that they had gone to Bangalore and Bihar after the first heist, the police are probing if they had any accomplices in the Karnataka capital. “Since Bangalore is known for its organised crime, we want to know if this gang hooked with anyone there. We have asked the Bangalore police to help us in this regard,” said a senior police officer in Chennai.

The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu police about the encounter. The Chennai police have appointed K. Ashokkumar, a deputy commissioner, to probe the shootout till the state CB-CID takes over the investigation. A few human rights lawyers are planning to approach Madras High Court on Monday to seek a CBI probe into what they allege was “a fake encounter staged to cover up cold blooded murders”.

According to one police official, the shootout was aimed to be a deterrent so that outstation criminals would not see Tamil Nadu as a soft target for dacoity. “There are thousands of migrant workers and students from North Indian states in Tamil Nadu. Only a stern crackdown would send out the message that our state cannot be a stage for criminal activities by unscrupulous elements using these student and worker population as a convenient cover,” he explained.