The Chandannagar City Police in Hooghly district on Friday arrested three persons in connection with the murder of a Bihar-based scribe named Subhash Kumar Mahto.

Sourav Kumar (age 18), Priyangshu Kumar (age 21), and Roshon Kumar (age 22) have been named as the detained individuals. They are all citizens of the hamlet that is within the jurisdiction of Bakhri police station in the Begusarai district of Bihar, where Mahto was fatally shot on May 20.

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The three accused were concealing themselves in Chandannagar under fictitious identities, according to Vidit Raj Bhundesh, Deputy Commissioner of Chandannagar City Police.

“They provided phony documents to bolster their claim that they were Madhya Pradesh residents. They would go to Chandannagar’s Ganges River banks every evening “Federal claimed.

It is understood that because they were unfamiliar faces in the area, the locals, who frequently visited the river’s banks to take in the evening air, had questions about their behavior.

Finally, one of them informed the local police station and the three were summoned by the cops for questioning.

“Initially, they claimed that they were residents of Madhya Pradesh and also furnished fake documents in support of their claims. However, there were lots of inconsistencies in their statements following which our officials interrogated them further.

“Finally, they disclosed their real identities and also confessed that they were from a village in Begusarai district where Subhash Kumar Mahto was killed in May. We contacted our counterparts at the Bakhri police station, who confirmed the trio’s involvement behind the murder of the scribe,” Bhundesh informed newspersons.

The three people who have been detained are being held by the Chandannagar City Police, and a team from the Bakhri police station will soon be in Chandannagar to transport the three people back to Bihar on transit remand.

Local journalists in Bihar claimed that booze and sand mafias were responsible for Mahto’s death because he had been extensively covering this threat. This claim caused a national uproar.

On the evening of May 20, he was slain while he, his father, and a few other family members were walking back from a community supper.

According to witnesses, he was accosted by four strangers who shot him before fleeing the area.
(with inputs from IANS)