The director of a coal outsourcing company escaped a daring bid on his life near his house in Dhanbad on a busy Monday morning, exposing how unsafe the town has become in recent times.

A.N. Jha (55) of Dhansar Engineering Company (Deco) - one of the largest private firms involved in mines overburden excavation at BCCL and CCL sites in Dhanbad and Bokaro - was shot at twice not far from Bank More police station, but he managed to take cover inside an SUV.

Police are yet to identify the two assailants who came on a bike armed with a 9mm pistol. Since the attack took place around 8.50am when most shops in Shastrinagar were yet to open, there is no surveillance camera footage to aid their investigations either.

According to Jha's statement to police, he drove his SUV from his flat at Punjabi Mohalla and got down in Shastrinagar where his partner was waiting in another SUV on the other side of the road to drive him to a mining site in Jogta.

As Jha walked towards the SUV, speaking on his phone all the while, the bikers screeched to a halt near him. The pillion-rider flashed a pistol and pulled the trigger. Luckily for Jha, the magazine wasn't loaded properly and the bullet didn't fire. The youth fixed the glitch in a second and fired again; this time bullets whizzed through the air, but Jha had already begun running towards his partners SUV. The bullets missed target.

Bank More OC Ashok Kumar Singh said they had recovered two 9mm shells and a live cartridge from the spot. DSP (law and order) Dhirendra Narayan Banka said extortion or rivalry might have triggered the shooting.

This was the second attack on coal officials in recent months. On August 10, the general manager and legal officer of Maa Ambey, another private outsourcing company, were shot at and critically injured in Loyabad area.