Three bike-borne youths allegedly snatched Rs 23.55 lakh from a trader near his house in Howrah's Uluberia on Sunday evening.

Police said Rabindranath Guria, 55, a resident of Sarada Pally in Uluberia, was riding a bicycle and carrying the money in a bag. He told police that while he was approaching home around 7.30pm, he saw three youths in their late 20s standing beside the road in front of a motorbike.

While he was passing by them, the youths stopped Guria, a betel-leaf trader, and started beating him up. They snatched the bag containing the money and sped towards National Highway 6, an officer of Uluberia police station said.

Guria said in his complaint that a wholesale trader in Burrabazar had paid him the money for his produce.

"Those who committed the crime must have been tipped off that the complainant would be returning home with the money at that time. We are looking for the accused," Sukesh Kumar Jain, superintendent of police, Howrah (rural), said.