Bhubaneswar, April 20: The city police last night arrested three persons in connection with the Mancheswar firing incident on April 13. The police also seized a Bolero and two motorcycles from the accused trio.

However, the search is on for three others, including two hired criminals who had fired at 23-year-old call centre employee Namita Padhi on that day. These criminals have been absconding ever since the incident.

Deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Nitinjeet Singh said that though the exact cause of the firing was not known as yet, he suspected a longstanding dispute over money to be the reason behind the crime.

The accused were identified as Jitendranath Patra of Salepur, Rajendra Samal of Binjharpur in Jajpur and Biswonath Pradhan of Puri. Pradhan was working as a driver for a Sambalpur-based NGO run by the brother of a former state minister. The victim and her sister had worked for the same NGO in the past.

The accused were booked for attempt to murder and under the Arms Act. They were sent to jail after their bail pleas were rejected by a local court.

Singh said that criminals had been hired to terrorise Padhi, for which they had been paid around Rs 3 lakh. The police have seized Rs 30,000 from the accused. Pradhan had allegedly paid Samal to attack the woman. Samal, who had also worked for the NGO in the past, discussed the matter with two of his friends. They later hired two criminals to attack Padhi.

“On the night of April 12, all these criminals discussed the attack at a dhaba in Salepur. This was proved by the CCTV footage at the eatery. On the next day, Samal took the hired hacks to show them Padhi while she was coming from her Cuttack residence. In the afternoon, they fired at her near her Mancheswar office,” said the DCP.

He said that after the firing, the criminals left in Patra’s Bolero. Patra was providing logistics support to other criminals in this case. “We have identified the other criminals involved and very soon they will be arrested,” said Singh.

However, the police could not say why Pradhan, who was a driver for the NGO, gave the criminals a contract to attack the girl. The police also suspect that Pradhan was carrying out instructions given by someone else and the facts would be clearer after all the criminals had been rounded up.

The DCP said they had not got any evidence linking the Mancheswar firing with the firing at the husband of the victim’s sister Kabita last year in Sastri Nagar. In the previous incident, all the six hired hacks had been arrested and the prime accused was now lodged in Choudwar jail in Cuttack. “We are going to bring him on remand to find out the connection between these two incidents,” Singh said.

He also said that the victim was not cooperating properly with the police, which was creating problems for the police to arrest the accused.

In a separate incident, the Airfield police have detained four persons, including two engineering students, for firing at a businessman in Panchukuli on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar on April 17.