The assassins who gunned down Chandranath Rath on Wednesday night completed the entire “operation” in less than a minute and sped away on motorbikes, their faces covered.

A day after the attack, CCTV footage from close to the murder spot showed a white Mahindra Scorpio moving along Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Road in Madhyamgram around 10:08:50pm on Wednesday, with two motorbikes trailing it.

The two-wheelers were seen returning — after the assassination — barely 50 seconds later at 10:09:40pm.

Police sources said the silver Nissan Micra that the killers had used to block Rath’s white Scorpio before his assassination had been spotted near Calcutta airport’s Gate No. 2.5 late on Wednesday afternoon.

If the information is correct, it would suggest the killers had arrived in the city just a few hours before the assassination of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari’s personal assistant.

“Near Arhai Number Gate, the car is seen taking a U-turn towards New Barrackpore. It stopped for some time at Barasat, the suspected meeting point of the team,” an officer attached to the probe said.

Around 45 minutes before the murder, the Micra began moving again, the sources said, and stationed itself at the murder spot about 10 minutes before Rath’s SUV arrived.

“The pattern indicates they had either carried out a detailed recce of the route that Rath took every day, or were acting on specific information,” an officer said.

The initial theory had been that the men on the motorbikes tailing the Scorpio had shot Rath after the Micra had blocked it. But the police now suspect that the occupant or occupants of the silver Micra are likelier to have pulled the trigger and then fled the spot, riding pillion.

Sources said there were multiple pointers to a “professional gang” having meticulously planned the strike.

“They have managed to delay the investigation by using fake number plates that carried genuine registration numbers (belonging to vehicles of uninvolved citizens),” a senior officer said.

“This is the hallmark of a professional gang that wanted to buy time to escape, and spent weeks preparing.”

The Micra and one of the motorbikes, seized by the police, led the investigators to dead ends, far from their actual owners or occupants.

Rath was shot multiple times on the left side of his chest to make sure he was dead, an officer of Bengal police said. The assailants fired from both sides to ensure he could not escape.

The shots fired at the driver were “random” and not “confirmatory” — that is, not necessarily meant to ensure his death.

“In the case of the driver, there was no confirmatory shot. The killers were sure about who their target was,” the officer said.

The driver is on ventilator support at Apollo Hospital. “Three bullets were taken out from his armpit, his abdomen and the region just above his heart. His condition
continues to be critical,” a hospital official said.

Suvendu and other senior BJP leaders had rushed to the murder spot on Wednesday night. Suvendu has rejected Trinamool’s call for a CBI probe and expressed faith in the Bengal police.

The police are trying to piece together the sequence of events, checking footage from all the CCTV cameras in the area. However, several of the cameras were allegedly non-functional, creating a blind zone and making the police’s job more challenging.

Rath’s body underwent a post-mortem at a Barasat hospital on Thursday. Sources said the preliminary findings suggested death by bullets that punctured his heart.

A forensic team visited the murder scene on Thursday and collected samples.

Several spent cartridges were found and sent for forensic examination and ballistic tests. An officer said the bullets appeared to be from “sophisticated guns”.

Sources said Rath was speaking over the phone with party MLA Shankar Ghosh when he was attacked.