The three men wanted for the murder of kabaddi player Rana Balachauria, who were arrested near Howrah station on Monday, had stayed in a hotel on Marquis Street for two days without raising any suspicion before they travelled to Gangtok via Siliguri.

According to police sources, following a notification from Punjab Police, the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police initiated surveillance on the trio; however, they had already exited the city by that point.

“We received inputs from the Punjab police about fugitives having taken shelter in Calcutta. We started tracking them and found that they had left for Gangtok,” said a police officer.

Police sources said two suspected shooters — Karan Pathak, 21, and Tarandeep Singh, 25, and Akashdeep Singh, 21, a co-accused, had fled to Mumbai after the murder on December 15.

They entered Calcutta on January 4 and left for Gangtok on January 6.

On January 12, they made their way back to the city and were reported to be intending to board a train to an undisclosed location when the Calcutta STF arrested them.

According to the police, it is being investigated whether the trio submitted their
identity documents at the hotel where they stayed throughout their two-day visit to Calcutta.

The hotel is located within the jurisdiction of Park Street police station.

These repeated incidents have prompted concerns over how safe these criminals
feel while taking refuge in the city.

Such arrests prompted the police to tighten norms for verifying tenants and monitoring guest house bookings.

However, identifying criminals while renting out rooms remains a challenge.

Police officers said it was “practically impossible for anyone to verify the veracity of an identity document while it is being submitted at the reception” or to have instant knowledge that the person seeking a room is a wanted criminal in another state.

“We carry out checks and see if the hotels are maintaining registers and if they are collecting identity documents of all guests without exception. However, even for the hotels, it is practically not possible to instantly verify the authenticity of the identity documents submitted to them,” said a senior officer of Kolkata Police.

All hotels must retain records of their guests, including their phone numbers and identity documents, so they can be tracked down later if required.

Rana Balachauria, 30, a kabaddi player-cum-promoter, was shot dead during a kabaddi tournament at Sohana in SAS Nagar district of Punjab on December 15.

Two men approached him under the pretext of taking a selfie and opened fire. Balachauria had married less than two weeks before the assassination.