A junior doctor and a third-year student at NRS Medical College and Hospital were arrested on Thursday in connection with a murder at the male students' hostel on the hospital campus.

Abhishek Kumar, an intern, and Aurobinda Maji turned up in the homicide wing of the detective department at Lalbazar in response to summons and were arrested after they allegedly failed to answer queries related to the murder of Kurban Shah.

Kumar is the first junior doctor at NRS arrested for the lynching. Apart from Maji, six other students are behind bars.

'We suspect more students were involved in the murder. We came to know two or three more people were present at the spot where Kurban was found dead,' an officer of the detective department said.

'Kumar and Maji were directly involved in the fatal assault on the victim. We summoned them to Lalbazar after coming across strong evidences against them. During a prolonged interrogation, they failed to come up with satisfactory replies,' said Pallab Kanti Ghosh, joint commissioner of police, crime.

The police started rounding up students of the medical college for the murder from mid-December. Jasimuddin, a first-year student whose cell phone Kurban had allegedly stolen, was the first to be arrested.

'Jasimuddin had initially said he had seen a group assault Kurban but claimed he could not recall the faces. But while recording his statement in front of a magistrate under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, he named nine students,' an investigator said.

Sources said Kumar, from Bihar, and Maji, from Burdwan, came under the scanner because their room in the hostel was located close to the spot where Kurban was found early on November 16.

'We had questioned the two youths at the hostel during the first phase of investigation. But they denied knowledge of the lynching. We decided to examine them today after other accused mentioned their names during interrogation,' said an officer in the homicide wing.

The students behind bars other than Jasimuddin and Maji are Javed Akhtar, 21 (from North Dinajpur), Anurag Sarkar, 24 (from Jalpaiguri), Yusuf Jameel, 24 (from Murshidabad) and Arijit Mondal, 23 (from Bankura).

Yusuf is a final-year MBBS student and the others are in the third year.

Kurban, a mentally troubled father of four, was found unconscious and tied to a pillar in the third-floor corridor of the boys' hostel early on November 16. He was taken to the emergency ward of the hospital, where he was declared dead.

The police suspect hostel inmates had beaten him to death after the cell phone of one of them was found on him.

Gas leak

A fire broke out in the kitchen of a third-floor apartment in Santoshpur on Wednesday night when an LPG cylinder leaked. The fire was brought under control in 20 minutes. No one was injured.