An autorickshaw driver at the busy Garia intersection was allegedly threatened with a gun on Tuesday morning after he refused to ferry a man to Sonarpur.
A real estate developer, who allegedly whipped out the gun, and his driver were arrested at the spot.
Police said an improvised 7mm pistol has been seized. Both have been booked under various sections of the arms act.
The police said the gun was loaded and had five live cartridges inside.
The men had come in a Tata Safari and parked the vehicle along Raja SC Mullick Road, near a police kiosk, at the Garia crossing. The driver of the vehicle got off and approached an autorickshaw to take him to Sonarpur.
The incident happened around 5.30am, by when the area on the southeastern fringes of Kolkata is fairly busy, even on a winter morning.
“The man was intoxicated and the auto driver flatly refused to take him because he plies on a different route. Then the other man — the owner of the car — joined the driver and demanded that the auto driver take him to Sonarpur. Several autorickshaw drivers gathered at the spot and protested. It was then that the car owner took out a gun from his pocket and held it towards the auto driver who was refusing to ferry the Tata Safari driver,” said an officer in the south suburban division of Kolkata police.
The autorickshaw drivers who had gathered at the spot raised the alarm and alerted the police. A patrol team from Patuli police station, which was not far from the site, rushed in and arrested the owner of the Tata Safari and the driver.
The police identified the car owner as Dipayan Dutta, 40, and the driver as Chiranjit Karmakar.
Karmakar was driving Dutta to his Bansdroni home when they decided to stop midway. Karmakar approached the autorickshaw on the Garia-Baruipur route to take him to Sonarpur, which falls on a different route.
Several residents of the locality said they had never seen someone brandish a gun so brazenly in their lives.
“I have grown up in this neighbourhood. I have never seen such behaviour here on the roads. This is scary. People have such easy access to guns now,” said an IT professional who lives in Garia’s Kanungo Park.
The police said both accused were produced in a court later in the day. They have been remanded in police custody.
“It has yet to be ascertained how this man got hold of the gun. It is a country-made gun,” said an officer.
