One of the murder accused, Shakti Mondal (centre), at the Darjeeling police station on Sunday. Pictures by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, Jan. 29: Two persons were arrested today for murdering a waiter and an assistant manager of a Darjeeling hotel housing a bank, which they had planned to rob.

Police suspect that waiter Mohammed Mustafa who had the keys to the bank was targeted when he refused to hand them over to the gang.

Assistant Manager Sandip Rai was killed probably because he had witnessed Mustafa’s murder, the police said.

Shakti Mondal, 21, and Sanju Roy, 22, were picked up from Matigara in Siliguri subdivision and have allegedly confessed to murdering Mustafa and Rai, the employees of Hotel Meghma.

Kunal Aggarwal, additional superintendent of police of Darjeeling, said: “We picked up the duo from Matigara today and both have confessed to the crime. They will be produced in court tomorrow.”

The murder seems to be a fallout of an attempt to rob a private bank on the ground floor of the annexe building of Hotel Meghma, Aggarwal said.

The main hotel is about three buildings away from the 10-room annexe. The annexe was looked after by Rai and Mustafa. Both of them were found dead in room number 102 of the annexe on January 21.

Investigations have revealed that Mustafa used to clean up the office of the bank every morning. “Since the hotel and the bank were in the same building, there was a back door that connected the hotel to the bank. Mustafa had the keys of this particular door,” said Aggarwal.

The police believe that two more persons were involved in the murder.

“Some people probably knew that Mustafa had the keys and they wanted to enter the bank through the backdoor using the key which Mustafa had with him,” said Aggarwal.

It was also learnt that the arrested men along with their accomplices were put up in the hotel in “good faith”. By “good faith”, the police meant that the accused were probably known to Mustafa or used a reference of some acquaintance and pleaded with him to put them up at the hotel free of cost. The hotel was empty at that time.

“The assistant manager seems to have been murdered as the killers thought that Rai had come to know of Mustafa’s death,” said Aggarwal.

Rai used to sleep in the same hotel as Mustafa.

Sources in the police said Mondal and Roy, who has a criminal record and was release-ed from a correctional home in January after serving out a sentence on a drug-related case, were probably tipped off by people who had helped construct the bank. The bank was opened only a couple of months ago.

“The fact that those involved in the murder worked very precisely makes us believe that the people who tipped them knew about the building plan,” said a police official.

After the murders, the accused could not enter the bank without the keys and a break-in would have invited suspicion.

The building is along Gandhi Road near Darjeeling’s famous Mall. The sources said the murderers had stayed in the hotel till early morning and had boarded a taxi to flee Darjeeling. “Since they did not have money with them and their attempt to break into the bank failed, one of them had handed over a cellphone to the driver to compensate for the taxi fare,” said a police officer.

He said the police were tipped off about the cellphone.

“The arrested people were traced through the cellphone which was with the taxi driver,” said the officer.