Police probing the murder of jeweller Sankar Jana at his store in Baranagar on Saturday said CCTV footage had been found that showed at least one person standing outside with his face covered with a mask, while a group was entering the shop a few moments before the man was found dead.

Jana was killed and his store robbed on Saturday as men posing as clients had entered the store and overpowered him before killing him.

The police said Jana was throttled and hit with a blunt weapon. The attackers used red chilli powder to overpower him, they added.

No one was arrested till Sunday evening.

Police sources said they have collected CCTV footage from cameras outside the store and found the pictures of the men who carried out the operation.

“Preliminary investigation has revealed that the robbers had sprinkled chilli powder on Jana to overpower him and tie him up. He was found dead by the time his son, who is in Delhi, raised an alarm after he found that the CCTV output from the store to his mobile phone had stopped abruptly,” said an officer of Barrackpore police commissionerate.

Several jewellers in the neighbourhood complained that they were feeling unsafe and demanded the immediate arrest of the culprits.

The shop on Shambhu Nath Das Lane, where the jeweller was murdered, is situated less than a kilometre from Baranagar police station.

Several incidents of heists have been reported across the city and in the outskirts in the recent past.

In June 2024, armed robbers attempted a daylight heist at a jewellery shop, leading to a gunfight with the police in Ranigunj.

Another robbery was reported at a jewellery store in Howrah’s Domjur where a gang had robbed the store at gunpoint, holding the owner and an employee hostage.

In 2023, two armed gangs targeted branches of a popular branded jewellery chain almost simultaneously — one in Purulia town and the other in Nadia’s Ranaghat.

Earlier in 2023, a jeweller’s son in Barrackpore was murdered by a group of men who had entered the store posing as customers.