FOXING THE COPS: Landlord Kashinath Jaiswal and milkman Amarnath Prasad being produced in court after their arrest on February 7. A Telegraph picture

The prime accused in the Howrah gas-and-grab case, Kashinath Jaiswal and Amarnath Prasad, will be subjected to a narco-analysis test.

“This is an intriguing murder case and we don’t want to go wrong on any step. The narco test is necessary to build up a case against the accused and their aides, as there is no witness to anyone feeding Ram Bahadur Shaw’s room with LPG gas and setting it on fire,” said Soumen Mitra, the special inspector-general of police (Presidency range).

“The result of the narco test may not be admissible in a court of law but it would help us get a clearer picture about the conspirators,” said an investigating officer.

Early on February 7, the residents of Shibpur’s Kazipara woke up to screams for help and saw flames leaping out of Shaw’s one-room rented house at 276 GT Road.

One of the neighbours who managed to drag out Shaw’s daughter Deepali from the inferno saw an LPG cylinder outside the building. A tube attached to the cylinder was leading to the drainpipe hole of the room.

Shaw, wife Kewala Devi and their daughter Deepali died in hospital. The couple’s younger son, Dilesh, survived minor burns. Elder son Hridesh was in his tutor’s house, preparing for the ISC exams.

A probe revealed that landlord Jaiswal, helped by milkman Prasad, had hatched the murder plot to evict tenants from the building.

“The building has 11 tenanted rooms. Jaiswal wanted to vacate them, raze the structure and build a highrise. But the tenants foiled his attempts on every occasion, prompting Jaiswal to hatch the diabolical plot,” said an officer. Jaiswal and Prasad were arrested on the day of the killings.

The police informed a Howrah court that Jaiswal had admitted to the gas-and-grab plot, but they are clueless why the Shaws were targeted among all the tenant families. The sleuths are also not convinced of the claim that Hridesh’s recent spat with Prasad had prompted the milkman to fall back on the promoter for a revenge.