The special task force (STF) has arrested two sharpshooters of hardened criminal Anjani Thakur from Chandigarh on Sunday evening.

Ankit Singh and Subhash Kumar alias Sonu were working for Thakur who has been a terror in north Bihar especially in the Muzaffarpur region.

Special task force superintendent of police Nilesh Kumar said: "The arrest of Ankit and Subhash, the accomplices of hardcore criminal Thakur, is a big catch. His gang in Muzaffarpur has been involved in criminal activities such as murder, loot and extortion."

The gang was also involved in the murder of Atul Prasad Shahi, a contractor based in Muzaffarpur.

On April 6 morning, criminals shot Shahi dead at Shivshankar Path under the jurisdiction of Mithanpura police station.

Two motorcycle-borne criminals sprayed bullets from sophisticated weapons (AK-47) when Shahi was talking to a few people in front of his residence. The daylight murder was seen as an open challenge to the police.

Nilesh added: "Ankit and Subhash were involved in serious crimes. The Muzaffarpur police were looking for them for a long time and with their arrest we will try to reach Thakur."

Thakur has been unleashing terror in Muzaffarpur by kidnapping and killing contractors and traders and also demanding extortion from them.

A few days back, the STF received information that some members of the Thakur gang were hiding in Chandigarh. Based on the input, an STF team with the help of Chandigarh police arrested the duo from Darshan Bagh.

STF sources said after the murder of Munna Singh in Motihari a few years back many petty criminal gangs had surfaced in north Bihar and were a challenge to the police.

In the past few years, criminal groups of Santosh Jha, Mukesh Pathak, Tunna Singh and Anjani Thakur surfaced in north Bihar. Considered one of the most wanted criminals of north Bihar, Santosh Jha was arrested from south 24 Parganas district in Bengal on February 2014.

Though Jha was lodged in jail, his name resurfaced in the murder of two engineers working on a Darbhanga road project in 2015. Mukesh Pathak, a sharpshooter of Jha, was involved in the murder of the two engineers. Pathak was arrested in July 2016 from Ramgarh in Jharkhand.

Nilesh said: "If we reach Thakur with the help of his two accomplices, we will be able to check most of the gangs in north Bihar, as hardened criminals such as Santosh Jha, Mukesh Pathak and Tunna Singh are behind bars."