Maoists shot dead a 30-year-old youth suspecting him to be a police informer in Maoist strongholds of Lakhisarai, around 140km east of Patna, late on Thursday evening.

The police recovered the bullet-riddled body of the deceased identified as Sunny Ram, said to be a resident of Shivdih village under the jurisdiction of Kajra police station in Lakhisarai district, on Friday morning. A handwritten pamphlet and four empty cartridges were recovered from the spot.

Police said a group of 10 Maoists intercepted the youth near Ramtaliganj when he was returning to his ancestral village Shivdih from the local market. They tied his hands with a rope and pumped four bullets into his body. One of the bullets hit his temple, leading to death on the spot.

The police apprehended the involvement of the rebels in the murder of Sunny, better known as Sonu.

The victim's father Mahesh Ram told the police that the family members began a search after Sunny didn't return home late in the night. On Friday morning, his bullet-riddled body was found near Ramtaliganj Mor, which falls under the jurisdiction of Kajra police station.

His hands were tied with a rope suggesting he was first tortured and then shot, he told the investigating officials.

On getting information, senior police officials, including additional superintendent of police Pawan Kumar Upadhyay and sub-divisional police officer Pankaj Kumar, rushed to the spot and sent the body for a post-mortem. The station house officer of Kajra police station, Sujeet Warsi, said a handwritten pamphlet and four empty cartridges of 7.62 bore were seized from the site of occurrence.

Lakhisarai superintendent of police Arvind Thakur said the Maoists killed Sunny after brandishing him an informer of the police. The residents told the police that the Maoists had earlier warned the inhabitants of the village to punish them for leaking information to the police about their activities.

Thakur said combing operations have been launched in the areas considered to be a hotbed of the Maoists in the district. Culprits would be apprehended soon, he said. Sources said Sunny was earlier associated with the banned outfit but later deserted the organization and started living in the village.

This is the second incident of murder of an alleged informer of the police in the district in the past two months. Earlier on July 14, a group of Maoists had killed three members of a family, including a woman, suspecting them to be informers of the police at Sheetlakorasi village on the border of Lakhisarai and Jamui districts.

The deceased were identified as Bajrangi Koda, Shiv Koda and Meena Devi. In the pamphlets, the extremists had described the deceased as anti-people, anti-party and stooges of the police. The police recovered another pamphlet, which read: The police informers will have to face dire consequences.