Police is learnt to have established the identities of the assailants who had gunned down city-based rice trader Narendra Singh Hora (56) on Main Road here last Friday.

ADG CID Ajay Kumar Singh is heading the probe in which over 50 officers are involved including IG (operations) Ashish Batra and DIG (Chotanagpur range) A.V. Homkar.

“Specific information about the investigations can’t be disclosed at this moment because we are very close to solving this case,” Homkar said.

On Tuesday, Hora’s son Rupendra accompanied by 35 traders and members of the Sikh community had met DC Rai Mahimapat Ray demanding immediate arrest of the culprits.

“Several suspects have been detained for questioning and over 100 personnel of Ranchi police are working in the case. I have been told that Ranchi police is close to solving the case. Results will be before you very soon and I have no doubt about this,” the DC said.

Three armed men had shot dead Hora while he was returning from his Upper Bazar shop Amrit Traders to his Pepee Compound home on his scooter. Ironically, a PCR van was patrolling barely 200 metres away.

Although his scooter was found abandoned behind Gossner College, 500 metres from the crime spot, but the Rs 5 lakh in cash kept in its dicky was missing.

Police sources said local criminals were involved in the crime. “This is not the handiwork of only the three criminals. There was at least one more person who passed information to his associates right after the trader left his shop,” a police officer said.

According to CCTV camera footage available with Ranchi police, the criminals were in white, maroon and orange T shirts. The suspect in the orange T-shirt took away the trader’s scooter. The same suspect is later seen crossing the road along with a stranger in another CCTV camera footage taken near Royal Bakery on Main Road.

Police are analysing the call details and tower dumps of three locations — shop of the deceased, Urdu Library on Main Road and near Rospa Tower where crime was committed. Tower dumps is a policing tactic in which law enforcement officials locate nearby cell towers and request all of the call, text, and data transmissions that occurred during the crime from the tower’s provider.

Rupendra expressed hope that police would soon arrest the murderers of his father.