Kolkata: At least five persons were arrested early Saturday morning from an apartment in New Town in connection with an incident of a shootout inside an ICU of a hospital in Patna in which one Chandan Mishra, a life sentence convict, was gunned down.
The operation was conducted by a joint team from the Bihar Police and the Special Task Force of Bengal Police.
A senior police official involved in the operation said that four of the five miscreants nabbed were directly involved in Mishra's killing that took place on Thursday.
“They fled Patna soon after the crime and took shelter in the flat in a well-known housing complex in the New Town area. Whether the fifth accused was involved in the crime or he only helped the others to hide is being probed,” he added. The mobile tower location of the accused helped the sleuths to track the miscreants. The Bihar Police produced them at a local court and got the permission to take them to Bihar under transit remand,” he added.
Mishra was facing a life sentence in a murder case.
The CCTV footage that went viral showed that the armed men reached the hospital riding on two motorcycles, entered the ICU and gunned down Mishra. They fled without facing any resistance and even celebrated before leaving the site in front of the hospital.
Mishra was earlier arrested by the STF in Kolkata in 2014 and forwarded to Buxar Central Jail, from which he was shifted to Bhagalpur Central Jail.
A resident of Buxar district, he was released from Beur Central Jail recently, on a 15-day parole for treatment, which was set to end on July 18. Police said that he was involved in 24 criminal cases, including over 12 murder cases.
Police believe the mastermind behind the murder is Mishra’s associate and childhood friend, Onkarnath Singh, also known as Sheru.
Both had a long criminal history and were once seen as an inseparable duo who terrorised several districts in Bihar.
The partnership began to fracture in 2015 when both were in jail again, this time as adults. The split eventually turned into a violent rivalry.