Four more assailants in the sensational murder of former Puri Jagannath temple managing committee member Krushna Pratihari have been nabbed from Koraput.
SP, Puri, Kanwar Vishal Singh told reporters on Tuesday that the foursome, Kunmun Suar, Tutu Mohapatra, Hari Panda and Jagan Khatei, had opened fire at the senior servitor on the fateful day, leading to his death.
"The four assailants fled to Satpada forest after executing the crime and spent two days in jungle. They managed to escape the police dragnet under the cover of dense vegetation. Thereafter, they fled to Chilika where they spent two days on a boat. Recently, they were planning to leave the State, but were nabbed by a team of police in Koraput due to good coordination between Puri Police and the police units of neighbouring districts," said Singh.
The SP said that a total of 7 teams, comprising 7 inspectors, 1 DSP and 1 Additional SP were formed to track down the killers.
Stating that the case posed ‘a real challenge’ to the police, Singh said the task of tracing the accused became all the more difficult as they were not communicating over mobile phones in order to avoid detection of their location. Therefore, the police had to rely on the time tested conventional detection techniques and field intelligence to track down the fleeing criminals.
"We will seek custodial remand of the accused and recreate the crime scene to ascertain the role of each accused in the murder."
Earlier on Monday, police had arrested six people, including two prime conspirators Kalia Singhari and Dolagobinda Singhari, who had allegedly planned to eliminate the senior servitor.
The Police has already clarified that Krushna's murder was a revenge killing and fallout of the 2012 Guna Singhari murder case.
As per the revelations so far, the hired assassins who were deputed by the rivals of Krushna were promised a payout of Rs 30 lakh for the hit.