Diamond Harbour: A group of uniformed personnel from the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), a central paramilitary force, stormed Diamond Harbour police station on Friday morning to free a commandant who had been arrested the previous evening for an alleged murder.

The jawans, who came in two vehicles, pushed and shoved their way through police resistance and took away officer Dipak Kumar Singh, who had been arrested along with colleague Amitabha Pramanik for the alleged murder of Altaf Jamadar.

Around 11am, a group of 10 to 12 SSB personnel from the Parul camp landed at the police station and stopped the cops from taking Singh and his co-accused to court. "In the melee, Singh ran out of the police station. He sat in an SSB vehicle, waiting for the jawans to take him away," an officer at Diamond Harbour police station said.

Singh was taken to the nearby SSB camp at Parul, around 1.5km from the police station. The contingent of paramilitary personnel at the camp appeared prepared for combat, according to the police.

The standoff continued for about an hour till the SSB brass ordered that Singh be handed back to the police.

The confrontation between local and central forces resembled what an army contingent had once done to "rescue" two of their colleagues from Park Street police station. The duo had been taken there for allegedly misbehaving with a woman on New Year's Eve in 2006.

The police got back custody of Singh after the additional director-general of police (law and order), Anuj Sharma, contacted the SSB brass.

He and jawan Pramanik had been arrested after Jamadar was shot dead inside a cable operator's office at Sarisha market in South 24-Parganas, around 50km from Calcutta. A team from Diamond Harbour police station found Jamadar on the floor with a bullet injury and a gun beside him.

The police first arrested Mozammel Mondal, the owner of the office. His interrogation led the cops to Singh and Pramanik. A preliminary investigation suggested that Singh and Pramanik had been surrounded by a group of men when they entered the cable operator's office. They snatched the money that Singh was carrying while Jamadar allegedly hit the SSB commandant's head with the butt of a firearm.

Singh allegedly shot dead Jamadar and left the office with Pramanik. The arrested commandant told the police that he had visited Sarisha with Pramanik to pursue a lead about a racket in fake and demonetised notes.

SSB inspector-general Shrikumar Bandyopadhyay said: "We have initiated a court of inquiry and our senior officers have already reached Calcutta for the probe."

Singh is the commandant of the 63rd Battalion, a reserve force of the Siliguri Frontier that is currently deployed in Barasat.