A man fired at a shop on the congested Keshab Chandra Sen Street in north Kolkata on Wednesday afternoon allegedly after an altercation between his father and the shop owner.
The bullet missed the target.
People in the area caught hold of the accused, Mohammad Shahbaz, and handed him to police.
Officers said the firing was apparently an outcome of an altercation between two traders in the area.
Altamas Hossain, who runs a business of manufacturing cardboard boxes, was at his shop on Keshab Chandra Sen Street near Rajabazar, when one of his friends, Aftab Alam, sought his help to resolve a dispute.
Alam has taken a shop on rent in the same area but was allegedly being prevented by Mohammad Shakil, another shop owner, from running business from there.
“Altamas Hossain went to help his friend and the two got engaged in an altercation with Mohammad Shakil on Wednesday morning. The matter was sorted out,” said an officer of Amherst Street police station.
But after a couple of hours, around 1.25pm, Shakil’s son Mohammad Shahbaz went to the spot and allegedly fired pointing his gun at Hossain’s shop.
Hossain said he ducked in time and escaped the bullet.
Alerted by the gunshot, people in the area rushed to the spot and caught Shahbaz.
“Shahbaz was arrested. A gun was found on him,” the officer said.
A little more than a month ago, a trader was shot at in his office on Keshab Chandra Sen Street following an alleged dispute over settlement of dues with an employee.
Dipak Das, the trader, was in his office on the ground floor of the multi-storeyed Keshab Residency when two youths allegedly walked in around 4.30pm and fired at him on January 12. Das slumped on his chair and the accused walked out.
Another incident of alleged firing was reported in Ballygunge in the first week of January, when a man had allegedly walked into the office of a coal merchant and fired in the air to pass on an extortion threat.
