Gunjan Ghosh

Gunjan Ghosh, serving life-imprisonment for abducting Salt Lake girl Roma Jhawar, was on Monday convicted for murdering a pool-car driver.

A Sealdah fast-track court, which heard the case, will announce the quantum of punishment on Tuesday.

The police said Gunjan, now 28, had murdered pool-car driver Biswajit Dey, also a partner in the convict’s pool-car business, in July 2004. “The youth had pumped two bullets into Biswajit’s chest in Narkeldanga and dumped the body into a canal nearby. His motive was to grab the entire business,” said an officer of the detective department.

Gunjan, who lived in Baguiati, has also been accused of killing Mithun Koley, the son of a Dum Dum-based businessman.

“In November 2003, Gunjan had used wife Rumela as a trap to abduct Mithun, an engineering student. The 22-year-old was picked up from in front of a restaurant in Salt Lake where he had gone to meet Rumela. Mithun was critically injured when Gunjan hit him on his head with a blunt weapon at the time of abduction,” said an officer investigating the case.

Mithun was later dumped in a comatose state on the premises of NRS Medical College and Hospital. The youth died after six months.

Gunjan was first arrested on the charge of being involved in Roma Jhawar’s abduction in February 2005.

It was later found that he had kidnapped Roma, the daughter of businessman Satyanarayan Jhawar, when her car stopped at a traffic signal near her Salt Lake house. The investigators who tracked him down by scanning his cellphone location recovered the Rs 19 lakh the Jhawars had paid him as ransom.

“It was during his interrogation in connection with the abduction that we came to know that Gunjan was also involved in two killings,” said an officer.

Arms haul: Ten improvised guns, 25 bullets and equipment for making bullets and guns were seized from an illegal arms factory in Mathhurapur’s Kalikapur, in South 24 Parganas, late on Sunday. The owner of the house where the factory was set up, Hasan Laskar, fled.