Two men on a motorcycle opened fire while fleeing after snatching a gold chain and a bracelet from a jeweller in a residential area in north Calcutta’s Baranagar on Tuesday morning.
A woman and her son who had stepped out of the house hearing the jeweller’s cries for help ran back in after they heard the gunshots and the bike-born men threatened to shoot them.
Pabitra Barick, in his early 50s, was parking his two-wheeler outside the house of his uncle Amarendranath, who had passed away a few days back, on Sambhu Nath Das Road around 11.35am when he felt a hand around his neck. Barick turned and saw a man holding his gold chain. The man asked him why he had abused his mother.
“I was dumbfounded. I’ve never abused anyone,” Pabitra told Metro. “That was probably meant to leave me bewildered for a few seconds. Before I realised what was happening, the man whisked out a revolver and snatched the bracelet from my left hand.”
The snatcher then ran towards his partner who was on a bike. Barick alerted his cousin Sourav and aunt Tapasi and the two stepped out. The attackers asked them to go back inside. When Saurav refused, the man with the revolver opened fire. When Tapasi tried to walk down, he fired another round in the air.
“Ebar kintu gaye marbo (This time I will target your body),” the man said. The mother and son ran inside.
Police said Barick ’s family owned land in and around Baranagar. Barick owns a small jewellery shop in the locality, which is dotted by several such shops, the police said.
“I don’t think this has anything to do with my business. Possibly, these youths have run out of money during the pandemic and were looking for a soft target,” Barick said.
A team of officers from Baranagar police station, which is probing Tuesday’s incident, has started scanning CCTV footage from cameras fitted on almost every other gold shop in the locality.
“The registration number of the two-wheeler in front is illegible and the one at the back is partly covered by the hands of the pillion rider,” said an officer of the police station. “We will trace them nevertheless.”
Split by BT Road in the middle Baranagar on the northern tip of Calcutta has a considerable population of goldsmiths and small-time gold traders working out of small shops and establishments spread over at least five wards of Baranagar municipality.
“After Bowbazar, this part of Calcutta has possibly the highest concentration of goldsmiths and gold shops with close to 50,000 people working out of this area. This is the first time that we have witnessed such an incident,” said Dilip Narayan Basu, a member of the board of administrators of the Baranagar Municipality from Ward 21. “Several shop owners and traders have been calling me up since asking if they should be worried. This is unbelievable.”