A professor was shot at and critically injured in his college chamber in Sitamarhi town of Bihar on Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses told police that two youths entered SRK Goenka College around noon and asked about the whereabouts of Professor Ravi Pathak, head of the physics department. They walked into his chamber and fired at him from close range. One of the bullets hit his jaw, piercing and exiting through his neck.

Both the miscreants walked away nonchalantly after the incident. The college teachers, staff and students were shell-shocked over the incident and nobody tried to stop them. However, they rushed Pathak to a private hospital for treatment. He has been put on ventilator support.

Pathak hails from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh and was appointed at the government-run college in 2018. He was popular among the college students and staff for his dedication towards work and institutional work.

The police rushed to the place of occurrence after getting the information and also went to the hospital to see the condition of the injured professor. “We are going through the footage from CCTV cameras installed at the college and trying to identify the people involved. We are investigating the case to find out the motive. The professor is seriously injured, but is alive,” Sitamarhi superintendent of police (SP) Manoj Kumar Tiwari told The Telegraph.

The police are also waiting for the professor to regain consciousness and reveal information about the people who fired at him. Sources in the police said that extensive construction work was going on in the college and the attack on Pathak could be linked to a dispute over its contract.