Bhubaneswar, April 12: Hiring of contract killers for eliminating rivals has given a new dimension to crime in the capital. In order to terrorise opponents, people are using hired goons with increasing frequency.

The case, which has brought the phenomeon into focus, is the fatal attack on a medicine store salesman, Sanjay Mishra who was lucky to survive.

Mishra’s rival who allegedly had an affair with his wife in the past had paid five contract killers to stalk him.

Interestingly, none of the five-supari killers, who shot the salesman, have a criminal background. It is the entry of first timers into the crime world, which makes the situation all the more difficult for the police.

Sources said, in the last five months there have been four cases of goons being hired to kill or terrorise people in the city.

While in some cases hardened criminals were involved, others were first timers.

Police said the trend continued despite raids being conducted in different parts of the city on a regular basis.

“But these hired killers are either from outside the state or local goons out on bail,” said the police officer.

The trend of hiring criminals to kill others was started from the murder of one Kuna Mangaraj in Jharpada area nearly seven years ago.

His killing was the fallout of traditional rivalry between Jena and Mangaraj families of Jharpada.

It took a bloody turn when the Jena family hired gangster Md. Haneef from Bihar to kill Kuna.

On November 1, 2009, Jharpada jail warder Manas Nayak was shot dead outside the jail. Later it came to be known that a hardened criminal Bikram Mallick, who was then lodged in the jail, had hired the killers.

According to psychologists, hiring criminals to kill a rival is a phenomenon that has been there for ages.

“But in the recent times people have found it easy to employ someone to kill a person as they would not come to the limelight. Again as the criminals are acquainted with such incidents they would manage to flee,” said Pratap Rath, a psychologist.

He even added that using contract killers would lessen the burden of planning and carrying out a crime, so many people prefers this as they know they can easily eliminate someone by spending some money.

Even law practitioners admitted that such types of contract killing have gone up in the recent days.

“As Bhubaneswar is a city in transition, more and more people are coming here. Land mafias, builders and several other criminals are hiding here in disguise as they find the city a safe place,” said Siddharth Das, a senior advocate.

“Those who do not want to face legal action, think hiring criminals would help them. But they forget that the hired criminals and the person who gives contract would be booked under same sections of the IPC,” he said.

While the city police have successfully detected some of these cases, they are yet to solve the mystery shrouding the murder of a courier manager in January this year.

They are yet to arrest the prime accused of the firing incident in Shastrinagar. But the city police are clueless about the rise of such types crimes.