The held persons are Manoj Kumar Sahu and Ajay Maharana of Laxmi Nrusingha Sahi area and girl friend of the main accused identified as Pradip Sahu, a history-sheeter.
Informing on the arrest Badabazar Police said, the victim Kalia Patra had a long standing enmity with Pradip, who is cooling his heels behind the bars currently. While the accused ran his extortion racket from the jail, a few days back he had demanded money from Kalia to which he had declined.
Later, on Pradip’s direction his girl friend and two others had hired a contract killer namely, Rajesh Panigrahi from Mumbai to eliminate Kalia. Rajesh had been paid a sum of Rs 3,000 to accomplish the task, added police.
After reaching Odisha on February 23, Rajesh arrived at Kalia’s house on 27th of the same month on a bicycle and targeted him with a country bomb which didn’t explode.
While, out of four persons involved in the murder attempt have been arrested, the contract killer will be nabbed soon, assured police.
