The scooter that Sushanta Ghosh’s attackers had used was found on Tuesday on Dharmatala Road in Picnic Garden, barely 1.5km from Kasba’s Rajdanga where the Trinamool councillor survived an attempt on his life on Friday night.

Police seized the vehicle on Tuesday afternoon after some residents raised the alarm about an unclaimed two-wheeler.

“I can’t remember exactly when but I guess I first saw the parked two-wheeler on Saturday. Some others in our locality, too, noticed it. We thought it was left behind by someone who would eventually turn up and take it away,” said a middle-aged homemaker who lives on Dharmatala Road, a small stretch that connects Rajdanga to Picnic Garden Road.

She did not want to be named.

Investigating officers said the vehicle was a key piece of evidence in the attempt-to-murder case, like the weapon that did not fire and remains untraced.

Ghosh, the councillor of Ward 108 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and chairman of borough XII, was speaking to acquaintances in front of his house on Friday night when a man, later identified as Yuvraj Singh, got off a scooter and tried to fire at him. But no shots were fired.

The man tried to flee on the two-wheeler but was caught.

“The spot where we found the scooter is a relatively quiet stretch close to the crime scene,” said a senior police officer. “The person driving it was familiar with the area, including the lanes and bylanes.”

The police have yet to arrest the person who drove the scooter. “Investigations so far have revealed that Gulzar Khan, who hatched the plot to kill the councillor, had replaced the two-wheeler’s number plate with a fake one,” said an officer.

Khan, a resident of Gulshan Colony in Anandapur, off EM Bypass, had bought the vehicle days before the foiled attempt on the leader’s life, the police said.

Khan was arrested in Burdwan’s Galsi on Saturday, a day after Singh, who allegedly tried to shoot Ghosh, was rounded up.

Khan has reportedly told the police that Ghosh had grabbed a 2,000-sqft godown that he owned in Gulshan Colony and he hatched the murder plot to take revenge against the councillor.

“During questioning, Khan named an associate of the councillor who he alleged had taken possession of the godown,” an officer said

Officials from the land and land reforms department visited Gulshan Colony on Tuesday to find out whether the building housing the godown was built following norms.

Several residents have alleged that buildings have come up in the colony on the government’s vested land or by filling water bodies.