DJ shot dead at bar in Jharkhand’s Ranchi, incident captured on CCTV camera

Ranchi, May 27

A disc jockey (DJ) was shot dead at a bar here, police said on Monday. The firing incident took place on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday.

CCTV footage of the incident went viral on social media platforms, in which it is seen that a man, only in shorts with his face covered and a rifle in hand, enters the bar and shoots at the chest of the DJ from point blank range. The accused fled after the incident, police said.

The deceased was identified as Sandip Pramanik, a resident of West Bengal.

Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Chandan Kumar Sinha told PTI, “The accused has been nabbed from Alipur police station area in Gaya with the help of Bihar police. He will be brought to Ranchi and a detailed interrogation will be conducted to ascertain the exact cause of the firing.”

The SSP said that soon after the incident, police started an investigation into it. “In the course of the investigation, it was found that the accused is in Bihar’s Gaya. A team was immediately rushed and the accused was nabbed today,” he said.

The accused changed vehicles at several places while on way to Bihar and the vehicles were seized, he said.

“We shared the location with Gaya police and kept track of him. Finally, we were able to catch him within 15 hours of the incident,” the SSP said.

Sinha said that the accused was in an alcoholic state when the crime was carried out. “In video footage, he is being seen alone. It needs to be found out whether he was alone or other persons were also involved in the crime,” the SSP said.

The accused was identified as Abhishek Singh alias Vicky, a resident of Ranchi.

Later, talking to media persons, the SSP said, “The incident occurred around midnight. When police reached the spot of the incident, there was no witness. It was a blind case for the police. Then, we set up seven teams. With the help of technical support and preliminary inquiries, the layer in the incident started opening.”

He said that prima facie it was known that there was a scuffle between the bouncers and customers including the accused at the bar around 10.30 pm.

Around 1.18 am, the DJ was standing near a lift just outside the bar and waiting for a taxi. Then, the accused came to the second floor where the bar is located and shot in the chest of DJ outside the lift, the SSP said.

“There was no one excluding the DJ at that time. It appears that after the fight with bouncers, the accused, who was in an alcoholic state, came for revenge,” he said.

Sinha said that the rifle, which was used in the crime, has been recovered. “After searching the house of the accused, we recovered two arms licenses issued from the state of Assam in his name. We are verifying if the license is authentic. The accused did not deposit his arms, while we had repeatedly requested armholders to deposit their weapons in view of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for the Lok Sabha polls,” he said.

The accused is a businessman, who holds agencies of a cold drinks and a cigarette company and he owns two vehicles. Both the vehicles that were used to flee have been seized, he said.

Abhishek’s three friends including Pratik, Md Samiruddin and Mrityunjay are also being interrogated in the case, police said.