• Scene 1: A man rushing out of a building opens fire. The bullet misses its target — an armed cop. Bullets fly. Another man emerges out of the building fixing the barrel of a larger gun. The cop takes a shot. The man with the long-barrel gun appears hit but boards a getaway vehicle
• Scene 2: Men wearing helmets enter a jewellery store posing as customers. Seconds later, they whip out guns and open fire. One person dies
• Scene 3: Men barge into a jewellery store, hit the owner with the butt of a gun and rob 5kg of gold jewellery. They don’t even bother to down the shop’s shutter or close the glass door during the 12-minute job

The above are not “scenes” from movies but real incidents that people in and around Calcutta have witnessed in the past few months.

Two things are striking in all of them — the impunity with which the robbers struck and their target, always a jewellery store.

The attacks have caused panic in an industry that Bengal still takes pride in. The statewide association of jewellers has held multiple meetings with the administration seeking assurances for the future.

Several jewellers told Metro the damage could be long-term: scaring away customers, putting a spanner in expansion plans and thwarting investment plans.

A veteran jeweller, who has been in the trade for five decades told Metro: “This fear is unprecedented. I have never seen anything like this.”

While police have stepped up vigil in Calcutta, stores in the districts are still vulnerable. Especially single stores where owners often lack resources to invest in hitech security and surveillance.

A spate of armed attacks on jewellery stores by men ready to kill or get killed has left many wondering if the nature of crime and criminals have changed over the years.

Over the past year or so, the city and its outskirts have witnessed a fearless breed of criminals who are neither afraid of engaging with the police nor worried about their proximity to a police station. They do not blink twice before pulling the trigger and have no qualms even if their planned heist ends up in murder.

Last year, a jewellery store owner’s son in Barrackpore was killed by a group of men who came posing as customers.

In coal town Raniganj, a cop managed to hit one of the robbers coming out of a jewellery store after a long shootout. The episode captured by a CCTV camera showed a brave cop and a group of daring robbers.

A retired assistant commissioner of Kolkata Police who had worked in the anti-dacoity section said robbers or dacoits carrying arms during a heist is not new but using them this easily is.

In legal parlance, if more than four persons carry out a robbery, it is referred to as “dacoity” and the men who do are dacoits.

“Dacoits using arms for firing in air or hurling crude bombs to ensure no one follows them is not new. But killing people or engaging in gunfight with the police is unusual,” said the retired officer.

The police suspect many of these gangs are based in neighbouring states. In most of these cases, witnesses have spoken about the attackers speaking in Hindi or a mix of Hindi and Bengali.

“Almost all the arrests in connection with the major jewellery store heists in the state belong to interstate gangs, mostly from Bihar. At least two of them have a prior history of being wanted as contractual killers,” a Bengal police officer said.

The alleged masterminded of the jewellery store heist at Barrackpore had been convicted for the murder of a teacher in Patna. One man who was involved in a heist in Ranaghat, Nadia, was wanted for the murder of a businessman at Shaktigarh.

A special investigation team has been formed to probe the Howrah heist. The team is co-ordinating with cops in Asansol-Durgapur to see if the gangs could be linked.

An officer in the state CID said: “Easy availability of illegal arms and their growing up in crime-prone belts increases the possibility of the youth getting involved in local crimes. Many graduate to the next level and often take up professional killing or dacoity as their jobs.”

Two men have been arrested in the Raniganj heist. Both are from Bihar.