Kolkata, May 11 -- Five days after the murder of Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari's personal assistant Chandranath Rath, police have arrested three alleged miscreants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP).
The trio was detained on Sunday and brought to Madhyamgram Police Station by special police teams, where they were interrogated. After they allegedly confessed during questioning, they were formally arrested on Monday morning.
The arrested persons were produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate's (CJM) Court on Monday with a plea seeking police remand. Following the hearing, the court remanded the trio to 13 days of police custody.
On May 6, at around 10:20 pm, Rath was returning home to the Doharia area near Doltala in Madhyamgram when another car allegedly blocked his SUV, forcing the driver to stop.
As soon as the vehicle halted, two motorcycles pulled up on either side of the SUV and the assailants allegedly opened fire indiscriminately from point-blank range. The attackers fled immediately after the shooting. Rath and his driver were rushed to a private hospital in the Madhyamgram area, where Rath was declared brought dead.
During the investigation, police recovered the car and the two motorcycles used in the crime from the Madhyamgram and Barasat areas within a few hours of the incident.
Investigators suspected that hired shooters had been engaged to kill Rath. Acting on specific inputs, police detained Mayank Raj Mishra and Vicky Maurya from Buxar in Bihar, while Raj Singh was detained from Ballia in UP. At the court hearing, Special Public Prosecutor Bibhas Chatterjee stated that digital evidence had been found against two of the accused.
It was learnt that a toll plaza payment had been made using one of the accused's UPI account through another accused's mobile phone.
However, police have not yet clarified whether the three arrested persons were the motorcycle-borne shooters or occupants of the car involved in the attack. The accused are being interrogated further to identify the mastermind and trace others allegedly involved in planning and executing the murder.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.