Chennai, Feb. 23: Chennai police today claimed they had killed five bank robbers after being forced to open fire in “self-defence” but no bullet marks in the room where the youths — one was believed to be from Howrah — were found dead raised doubts about a shootout.

One resident of the crowded locality where the supposed encounter took place said he had heard some noise but “certainly” not any bullet shots.

Police sources said the five — the other four, including the suspected leader, were from Bihar — had robbed two banks in Chennai’s suburbs on January 23 and February 20. They said a team reached Velachery in south Chennai after a tip-off from a resident that the photograph of one of the suspects released by the police resembled his neighbour.

“Our team had gone there to verify if the information was correct. But when the occupants of that house started shooting at our team, we had no option but to shoot back in self-defence and also to protect the innocent public who had started coming out of their homes on hearing the commotion,” Chennai police commission J.K. Tripathy told a media conference.

He insisted the police team gave the suspects enough time to surrender and retaliated only after two inspectors were injured when the robbers fired through the window of their ground-floor flat. The robbers had rented the two-room flat in a maze of narrow lanes crowded with tenements, just 5ft separating two rows of houses.

Tripathy said his team reached the house by 1am, but residents claimed the police asked them to turn in for the night by 10.

N. Angusamy, a vegetable merchant who lives two houses away from the scene of the alleged encounter, confirmed that the police asked them to lock their doors and switch off the lights by 10.

“True, I heard some noise but certainly no sound of bullet shots. The entire operation sounded very low key for an encounter. Only after 4am were we allowed to come out with strict instructions not to talk to anyone,” he said.

The walls of the room where the five were found dead had no bullet marks. Neither were there any bullet marks on the 14-inch TV and a washing machine in the room, though the floor was stained with blood and a pistol was found in a pile of clothes.

There were no bullet marks on the walls of neighbouring houses either. Even the glass pane of the window the robbers had allegedly fired through was intact. There was also no damage to the frame of the front door, which raised doubts over the police claim that they had broken it open.

When Tripathy was asked about the absence of such peripheral damage, he said all that would be covered by a magisterial probe.

Rights activists alleged it was a fake encounter. “It is unthinkable that neighbours in such a crowded area had no inkling of a gunfight in the dead of the night,” said advocate Sudha Ramalingam.

Tripathy said a male informant who had given the tip-off would receive a reward of Rs 1 lakh. He said investigators had pored over 400 hours of CCTV footage from banks in the area before the January 23 robbery at a Bank of Baroda branch and zeroed in on a person suspected to have carried out a recce.

“Employees of the two looted banks confirmed that he led the gang and threatened them with a pistol,” Tripathy said, adding that Rs 14 lakh robbed during Monday’s heist at a branch of the Indian Overseas Bank had been recovered along with five country-made pistols and two revolvers.

The gang leader has been identified as Vinod Kumar Sha, from Patna, a former student of SRM University in Chennai.

“We identified the robbers based on four voter identity cards and one driving licence found at the house,” Tripathy said. The other four have been identified as Chandrika Ray, Harishkumar Ray, Vinay Prasad (all from Bihar) and Abhay Kumar Singh, from Howrah. However, Howrah police said no family by the name of Singh lived at the address listed on Abhay’s driving licence.