The murder spot at Kanchanpally (picture by Nantu Dey) and contract killer Raju Chowdhury

Raiganj, June 20: The arrest of two hardened criminals back-to-back in a murder case here has led police to a gang of supari or contract killers operating in town.

A police team will leave for Uttar Pradesh by the end of this month to round up the other members of the gang which the law enfrocers stumbled upon while investigating the murder of a cloth merchant last year.

Cloth merchant Hira Ansari was gunned down in front of his house in Kanchanpally on December 14. Initially, it was thought he had been killed by robbers.

“But during the course of the investigation, we realised that it was not a case of snatching as the victim still had his gold ring and wristwatch intact. After we received the post-mortem report, we found that he was shot dead with a 9mm pistol. We then started probing the motive behind the killing,” said the inspector-in-charge of the Raiganj police station, Sujit Ghosh.

On June 8, the police arrested Raju Chowdhury from Subhasganj, adjacent to the town, and seized a 9mm pistol from him, the police officer said.

“On interrogating him, we found out that Ansari had paid an advance of Rs 2.5 lakh to a person living in Bandar to buy a plot of land. The owner of the land had contacted Raju Chowdhury and paid him Rs 50,000 to murder Ansari so that he did not have to part with the land.”

Chowdhury in turn got in touch with a contract killer, Raju Debsharma, a resident of Jhitkia in adjacent Bihar.

As Debsharma was not familiar with the layout of Kanchanpally, Chowdhury pressed into service three other youths for Rs 25,000. They studied Ansari’s movements and helped Debsharma make a getaway after the killing.

“We arrested Debsharma from Jhitkia on June 12 and seized another 9mm pistol from him. He told us that he and the three others, along with Chowdhury, had planned the murder. Although Debsharma was the shooter, the others were also armed and had kept a watch on the area when the crime was committed. Chowdhury and Debsharma had disappeared after the murder, thinking that they would return once the dust settled down or we let our guards down,” Ghosh said.

However, the main culprit, the owner of the land, fled to Uttar Pardesh. The police are not willing to disclose his name in the interest of the investigation.

North Dinajpur police chief Milon Das said this was probably the first case of contract killing in town. “We are trying to round up all the gang members and sending a team to Uttar Pradesh where we have specific information that the owner of the land and those who helped the shooter are hiding. We have already contacted the Uttar Pardesh and the Bihar police,” Das said.

Sankar Kundu, the secretary of the West Dinajpur Chamber of Commerce, said the business community had heaved a sigh of relief after Ansari’s killer had been caught. “Now we are hearing that it was a contract killing and that is a cause for worry,” he said.