A key accused in the murder of BJP leader Manish Shukla has been arrested in Tamil Nadu in a different case, prompting a team of officers of Bengal’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to leave for the southern state on Friday to interrogate him.

CID officers said that the arrested Anish Thakur had been allegedly one of the shooters present near the BJP party office at Titagarh in North 24-Parganas, some 18km from Calcutta, on the evening of October 4, 2020, when Shukla was gunned down.

Anish had been eluding the police net for months since his name surfaced following interrogation of those arrested so far in connection with the murder of the BJP leader and former councillor of Titagarh who was also close to BJP’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh.

On Friday, the Tamil Nadu police informed Bengal CID that they had arrested Anish in connection with a robbery at the office of a gold loan company a few days back.

Anish’s photograph matched the one that the Bengal CID had given out to other state police departments in its search for the fugitive.

“We have been on the lookout for Anish for some time. He was one of the shooters who killed Manish Shukla,” said a senior officer of the CID.

“The Tamil Nadu police have informed us they arrested him in a separate case. We will now try and interrogate him before pleading for his custody,” the officer said.

The CID while scanning through the CCTV camera footage of the murder had zeroed in on Anish. Originally from Bihar, he is known to be a close associate of Subodh Kant Singh, a ganglord of the state.

CID officers also said Sanjay Roy, a resident of Vishali in Bihar who had been arrested from Patna Station Road within days of the BJP leader’s murder in Titagarh, had identified Anish from the footage and later admitted his involvement in the crime.

The gang that was allegedly involved in this murder case was also the one accused of robbing 30kg of gold ornaments worth Rs`15 crore from a gold loan company office close to the police and administrative district headquarters in Burdwan town on July 17, CID officers said.

Excluding Anish, 10 persons have been arrested in the Shukla murder so far.