PTI
Kolkata
Tension prevailed throughout the day in the Pilkhana area under the Howrah city police commissionerate in West Bengal after a real estate developer was shot dead by assailants at point-blank range in full public view in the early hours of Wednesday, police said.
The incident, the chilling visuals of which were caught on CCTV cameras, took place around 4.10 am before a tea stall in Second Bye Lane in Pilkhana, a shanty town in the Golabari PS area of the city.
Till reports last received, no arrests were made in connection with the murder. One of the assailants was identified as Harun Khan who, the opposition BJP alleged, had close links with local TMC MLA Goutam Chowdhury.
While a mob brutally assaulted Mayukh Thakur Chakraborty, a correspondent with vernacular news channel ABP Ananda, when he reached the spot to cover the incident later in the day, incensed locals alleged police inaction, blocked the adjacent GT Road and burnt tyres, prompting the police and RAF to conduct route marches in the area.
CCTV footage of the incident, which could not be independently verified by PTI, showed the victim, Safiq Khan (27), a local real estate developer, having a verbal exchange with one of his attackers and then collapsing after being shot in the head and chest repeatedly by two assailants.
The footage also showed panicked bystanders rapidly running away from the spot after the first shot was fired on the victim’s head from behind, even as his attackers continued to pump bullets into the chest of Khan after he had collapsed.
The suspects, Harun Khan and Rafakat, continue to remain at large after fleeing the crime scene, which is no more than a kilometre away from the local police station and a few kilometres from the commissionerate headquarters.
Khan was declared dead on arrival after he was taken to the Howrah district hospital, police said.
Police added that they suspected the murder was fallout of a long-standing rivalry over real estate spoils. Khan’s family alleged that the accused had demanded a large sum of money from him.
