Kharagpur, Oct. 3: A block development officer was caught intercepting vehicles on a highway and snatching valuables on Navami night.

Thirty-five-year-old Debashis Chattopadhyay, a WBCS officer posted in East Midnapore’s Moyna, was accompanied by three others — a road contractor and two unemployed youths.

In a hired Ambassador, the drunk quartet was picking targets on the stretch of national highway six that goes through Moyna.

Software engineer Sandip Mitra, who had come home to Kharagpur for Puja, was one of Chattopadhyay’s victims.

On Sunday, Mitra was travelling from Midnapore town to Kharagpur on his motorcycle when he stopped near a petrol pump to relieve himself around 9 pm.

“Suddenly a car screeched to a halt next to me and the men inside asked why I had parked the motorcycle there. They demanded my wallet. As I took out my purse, they snatched it. When I tried to call my friends on the mobile, they snatched it too and beat me up. All of them were drunk and hurling abuses,” Mitra told police.

Robbed of his moneybag and mobile, he went to the fuel outlet, about 130 km from Calcutta, and called up the Kharagpur police station to ask if policemen in plain clothes were patrolling the road. Only one jeep carrying uniformed personnel was on duty on the 30-km stretch of the national highway.

Mitra told the fuel pump officials what happened to him. Some half-a-dozen people, who had gathered around him, went back to the place where he had been accosted.

The car was still there and its occupants were stopping other motorcyclists and extorting money from them.

Challenged by Mitra and the men who came along, they fled in the car. But the techie took down the number and called the police.

Their jeep caught up with the Ambassador about 15 km from Kharagpur town. The BDO, the small-time contractor, Pritam Majhi, 30, Sukanta Bhowmick and Saumitra Hait were arrested.

The driver of the hired car, Sukdeb Khatua, who pleaded innocence with the police, has also been held.

“If the charges are proved, the BDO can be jailed for up to seven years,” said district superintendent of police R. Rajsekharan.

Chattopadhyay, a resident of Tangra in Calcutta originally, was married three years ago. A year after his marriage, his wife brought charges of cruelty against him and went back to her parents in north Bengal. In Moyna, where he was posted two years ago, the BDO lived alone.

The district CPM leadership alleged that Chattopadhyay’s “drinking habits and hobnobbing with dishonest contractors” were known. “We had lodged complaints against him with the district administration,” said Nirmal Jana, a district leader.

The police said the BDO had undergone counselling to control his drinking habits. The district magistrate has ordered an inquiry into Chattopadhyay’s conduct.