The mother of 12-year-old Vikas Kumar, who was killed in a firing, being consoled by relatives at her residence in Kasidih in Jamshedpur. Photo by Srinivas

Jamshedpur, Aug. 12: A gunbattle war between henchmen of rival contractors erupted on one of the busiest roads of the city this morning, killing three people, including a school student.

Businessman Lalit Khandewal, Rajan Singh, a relative of former BJP district president Abhay Singh, and Vikas Kumar, a student, were trapped in the crossfire after the rival gangs opened fire against each other on a small lane that branches out from Kalimati Road at around 10.45 am.

Eyewitnesses claimed there were at least 35 rounds of firing, which also injured a snack vendor and an auto-rickshaw driver.

When the shootout ended half-an-hour later, there were three lifeless bodies on the road lying in pools of blood. As shop-owners downed their shutters in protest against the incident and police grappled to calm down an unruly mob, traffic on the thoroughfare became paralysed for the next half an hour.

According to sources, the shootout was an outcome of a dispute over who would take control of the kutcha road, where the firing started, that is being built on government land.

The lane, on which tarmac work would have started today, ends at the office-cum-residence of Vikas Singh, the proprietor of K.K. Builders, and passes in front of a four-storied building that is still under construction by the former district BJP president Abhay Singh and his brothers, Dilip Singh and Nirbhay Singh.

Sources said the construction of the road went awry when henchmen of the Singh brothers, armed with rods, hockey sticks and bricks, began assaulting the staff of K.K. Builders.

The latter was instrumental in getting the road constructed by the Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee.

As the two sides opened fire, a full-scale battle spilled onto the Kalimati road. As the gang war continued, 35-year-old Khandelwal, a resident of Adityapur who owns a drum factory, fell to a bullet. He was supposed to be headed for a bank to deposit money.

Vikas Kumar, a resident of Kasidih who had come to watch the trouble after playing a cricket match, also met the same fate and so did Rajan Singh, who lived in Parsudih.

Police superintendent Ashish Batra, who reached the spot 20 minutes later, had to backtrack after an angry crowd caught hold of him and started demanding immediate arrest of the culprits and hurling abuses.

Sensing trouble on the Kalimati Road, the district administration deployed the Rapid Action Force.

A raid was carried out in the godowns and the residence of the Singh brothers in Kasidih and five licensed firearms seized.

At first, the crowd refused to allow the police lift the bodies but they gave in after the intervention of Deepak Sinha, the deputy superintendent of police.

?The police will recommend compensation for the families of the innocent victims,? said deputy inspector-general of police Ram Chander Ram.

Batra later said they had also seized the rifle and gun of Abhay Singh.

?We will proceed to cancel the license of both Vikas Singh and Abhay Singh. They killed an innocent student today. The other two killed could have been involved in the incident,? said the police superintendent, adding that cases would lodged against both the parties. Nirbhay Singh, brother of Abhay Singh, and Vikas Singh have been detained by the police.