Steel City trader shot at after failed extortion bid

Jamshedpur: A city-based businessman suffered gunshot wounds after his shop was raided by unidentified assailants to extort money on Saturday.

Sanjay Barman, 45, is a resident of Kandra and owns a cement shop on the Kandra-Dumra Road in the city. Around 10 am Saturday, when Burman was at his shop, four men arrived in motorcycles and demanded Rs 10 lakh as extortion at gunpoint. When he resisted, the assailants opened fire at him, his family members said.

Yash, Sanjay's nephew, said his uncle sustained two bullet injuries to his left leg. The criminals also hit him in the head with the butt of a gun and physically assaulted him before fleeing the scene.

Barman was then taken to the Tata Main Hospital with gunshot wounds. Doctors at the hospital said his condition was stable on Saturday evening.

Anjani Kumar, the officer-in-charge of Kandra police station, said, "A case has been registered and CCTV footages from the stretch of the road is being scanned to identify the assailants." Kumar however refrained from divulging further details. The assailants were at large till Saturday night, police sources said.

BJP Jamshedpur Mahanagar general secretary Anil Modi said, "Police in the city is busy conducting traffic checking at the cost of the increasing crime in the urban circle.

"It will not be wrong to say that police force is busy doing helmet checking across the city while the criminals are moving around fearlessly," Modi said.

He demanded effective patrolling and stringent punishment to the criminals caught doing crime in the city.

Notably, BJP leaders in Jamshedpur and across the state have been targetting the state govt for failing to curb rising incidents of crime across Jharkhand. The attack on Burman also sent the local business community in a state of shock.