Two of the suspects in the Arup Bhandari murder fled shortly before CID officers raided their hideouts in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand early on Sunday, police said.

In addition to the two states, the CID has sent teams to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to track down the four fugitive suspects whose names have been mentioned in the FIR lodged by Arup's family with Howrah's Golabari police station.

The four are believed to have fled Howrah immediately after the fatal assault.

'The suspects fled their hideouts right before our raids at dawn,' said a CID officer. He did not disclose where the raids were conducted in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, and the identities of the two youths who are said to have escaped. The investigators also refused to disclose where they were looking for the suspects in the other two states.

'We have information that the suspects are in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,' the officer said. The accused on the run have been identified as Anand Prasad, Sudip Tiwari, Suvan Dubey and Barun Shaw.

One of the five suspects in the case - Raju Tiwari - was arrested from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, a week after the assault on Arup and within 24 hours of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's visit to his home in Salkia.

'He is the only suspect to have been arrested till now. He had taken refuge in a relative's house. Raju has confessed to the crime,' an officer said.

Arup, a resident of Rishikesh Ghosh Lane, was hit on the head with an iron rod allegedly by some youths from the locality while he was returning home after immersing a Saraswati idol in the Hooghly on the night of January 28. He was taken to a nursing home, where he slipped into a coma and died last Monday.

During her visit to Arup's house last Wednesday, Mamata had said the police could have moved faster. Earlier, the victim's family had accused the police of failing to act on their FIR.

After visiting Bhandari's house, Mamata described the fatal assault as an outcome of an 'internal feud' and questioned the family's claim that Arup had been attacked for protesting the teasing of two women. CID sleuths, too, said they were yet to come across any evidence that could back the family's claim.

The officers probing the murder said all the fugitive youths had links with other states. 'All of them have relatives in other states. Our investigation revealed that the suspects used to visit their ancestral villages or towns often and have friends there,' said a CID officer.