A 45-year-old woman was murdered in front of her husband, allegedly at the behest of land mafia in Bhagalpur town, around 230km southeast of Patna, on Saturday evening.

The second incident of its kind in the past 48 hours, has sent shock waves among residents of the town in general and members of the Bengali community in particular. One of the suspects in Saturday's incident has been arrested.

Bireshwar Ghosh (51) told the police that four men aged between 18 and 25 years barged into their house around 5pm on Saturday, when he and his wife, Shampa, were sitting at their Mathuranath Ghosh Lane residence under the jurisdiction of Aadampur police station. One of them fired at Shampa from close range after pushing him off the chair, when he tried to intervene.

The attackers escaped unchallenged as Bireshwar couldn't muster courage to chase them. He was so frightened that he even refused to take his injured wife to any hospital.

Instead of admitted his wife to hospital, the husband washed her blood-stained clothes and offered her prasad of goddess Kali.

The incident came to the fore when Bandana Ghosh, the principal of a local public school and a former student of Birendra, reached the Ghosh household late in the evening. Neighbours gathered at Birendra's house after Bandana raised an alarm. Subsequently, Aadampur police came and took the body for post-mortem.

Neighbours were shocked when Birendra told the police that his wife kept on requesting him to take her to hospital but the latter did not. "I would have been killed had I stepped out," a police officer quoted Birendra as saying.

Bhagalpur senior superintendent of police Manoj Kumar said Ritesh Kumar Yadav (23), one of the suspects, had already been arrested and forwarded to jail. Ritesh has confessed to his crime.

The station house officer (SHO) of Aadampur police station, Rajiv Kumar, said Ritesh had revealed the names of three other associates, who were absconding after the incident. "Raids are being conducted to nab the remaining accused," said the SHO over phone.

The police suspect the involvement of property mafia behind the murder. Bireshwar claimed that he was the target of the killers but murdered his wife as she came in the middle.

"The murder aimed at terrorising the family into disposing off their property at throwaway price," a relative told investigating officers.

On October 21, Raju Choudhary was killed in Bhagalpur's Barari, apparently over another land-grab bid. A senior police officer admitted that cases of property-grab had surged in Bhagalpur.