Rourkela: Rourkela police Wednesday arrested eight persons, including a PLFI member and three contract killers, for firing at a youth at Mitkundari here.
The accused were Raidas Kamal (30) of Mitkundari, Raj Kumar Nag alias Raj (28) of Jamsera, Surendra Sahu (28) of Ankurpali, Mustaffa Alam (20) of Phuljhar and Chandrasekhar Sahu (26) of Gopabandhubali. The contract killers were identified as Sudam Singh (30), Chandrabhanu Singh (36) of Jharkhand and Bhisma Sayaha (24) of Gopabandhupali while the PLFI member was identified as Sudam Singh.
Police also seized a ‘made in America’ gun, a country gun and four rounds of bullets from the accused.
Rourkela Zone-3 DSP PK Mishra said this at a press conference.
According to Mishra, the land prices on the banks of river Koel increased after the construction of a bridge across the river. This created a rift between Mitkundari’s former sarpanch Mahadev Mundari and a fellow villager Suresh Bhumij who owned land there.
The rivalry between the two families took an ugly turn after Suresh handed over his land to his son-in-law Dinesh Mundari. Dinesh took possession of the land and stood obstacle to Mahadev’s family who wished to take over the land.
Mahadev’s family hatched a plan to eliminate Dinesh and prepared a blueprint. Mahadev’s son contacted his aide Raju Nag who contacted Surendra, an illegal liquor trader.
Surenda took the contract and contacted Chandrabhanu, a hardcore criminal from Jharkhand.
Chandrabhanu contacted Sudam and Bhisma for the execution of the crime. The three took Rs 30,000 from Mahadev’s son Rahidas for the murder.
As per plan, the three fired at Dinesh while he was at a betel shop and fled. Locals rescued Dinesh and admitted him to the Ispat General Hospital and later shifted him to a private hospital in Bhubaneswar where his condition improved after three months of treatment.
Since then, the police had kept an eye on Rahidas. Meanwhile, the three contract killers kept on persuading Rahidas for the remaining amount. However, Rahidas did not pay them as Dinesh was still alive.
Acting on a tip-off, police arrested the three and based on their confessions made further arrests, Mishra said.
Meanwhile, a report stated that a police officer was involved in the case as he was a friend of Rahidas. PNN
