The CID team probing BJP leader Manish Shukla’s murder case arrested one more accused from a hideout in Titagarh, adjacent to the Kalyani Expressway, in the early hours of Friday.
Sources in the CID said the accused Nasir Ali Mondal, a resident of Basanti in South 24-Parganas, was a local link of alleged mastermind Subodh Singh.
Acting on information gleaned during interrogation of those already arrested in the Shukla case, a CID team raided Nasir’s hideout in Titagarh and nabbed him. Produced before a court in Barrackpore on Friday, he has been remanded to 10 days of police custody.
With this, the CID has so far arrested nine persons in connection with Shukla’s murder. Last month, police had arrested Amar Yadav, an accomplice of Subodh Singh, who is an expert in the maintenance of improvised firearms and is currently lodged in a jail in Bihar’s Nalanda.
Shukla, a former councillor of Titagarh Municipality, was gunned down on the night of October 4 on BT Road in Titagarh by four motorcycle-borne assailants.
CID sources said Nasir, a long-time aide of Subodh, had accompanied the assailants.
“Nasir was present during the attack on Manish Shukla and had probably fled to Bihar. He recently returned and took shelter in Titagarh. We got a tip-off about his location on Thursday night and formed a team to nab him early in the morning,” a CID officer said.
The conspiracy behind the murder allegedly unfolded with the arrest of local trader Khurram with whom Shukla had an enmity.
CID eventually came to know about the Bihar link following the arrest of Subodh Rai, a resident who provided logistic support to contract killers and arranged rented rooms for them in Barrackpore. On October 30, the CID took custody of Sujit Kumar Rai, and Roshan Kumar Yadav, two sharpshooters from Punjab who had been arrested by Punjab police in connection with a robbery case in Ludhiana.
Subodh Singh had given away names of Bihar-based criminals Sujit and Roshan and spoken about their involvement in the murder when a CID team interrogated him in Nalanda jail last month. The duo also confessed to their role in the murder.
Cow smuggling case
Enamul Haque, an alleged kingpin in the cow smuggling racket operating on the India-Bangladesh border, was sent to judicial custody by a CBI court in Asansol on Friday.
Enamul was arrested from New Delhi by the CBI last month but sent to isolation after testing positive for Covid late last month. The CBI on Friday pleaded with the court to grant 14 days’ custody.
After hearing both sides, the court rejected the CBI’s plea and sent Enamul to judicial custody. Another accused, BSF commandant Satish Kumar, was again sent to 11 days of judicial custody.
Additional reporting by Abhijeet Chatterjee