Kolkata: Members of the gang involved in the shooting at a Patna hospital, who landed in police net on Saturday night at a guest house at Madurdaha, checked in on Friday night on the pretext of an associate’s medical treatment, said the owner of the establishment. The three-storey guest house, Green Edge Regency, is merely 280 m away from Anandapur police station. Following the raid, in which five persons — Tauseef alias Badshah, Yunus Khan, Sachin Singh, Harish Singh, and a woman — were nabbed, cops asked other guests to move out and then sealed the guest house on Sunday. The lane adjacent to its entrance was barricaded.Santoshpur resident Madhumita Mukherjee, the owner of the guest house, said the accused sought emergency accommodation for the medical treatment of the woman. “They took two AC rooms for Rs 1,500 each on the third floor late in the evening on Friday. We did not find anything suspicious in their behaviour. According to norms, we asked for their identity documents before allowing them entry,” Mukherjee told TOI.“I got a call from cops on Saturday evening that the criminals were hiding in our guest house. By the time my husband and son reached the spot, cops had cordoned off the area. Police seized the register, and the guest house is now shut. There were three other guests who had to vacate their rooms before cops sealed the gate,” she said.According to sources, the four learnt about the guest house from the woman. Some witnesses claimed to have seen the woman in the area earlier. “People hardly come to this guest house with families, and this place is mostly frequented by youngsters in groups for drinking and other purposes, despite it being a stone’s throw from the police station. The woman who was caught appears familiar to many of us,” said Bapi Chowdhury, who lives opposite the guest house. Sovon Raunak, one of the other guests, said, “I checked in on Saturday. I came to know about the incident when cops asked us to move out immediately.“The guest house, with 15 rooms, came up in 2018 and reportedly served as a hotel earlier. A few years ago, Mukherjee, whose husband Gautam is a promoter in Santoshpur, turned it into a guest house. About two weeks ago, the ground floor was rented out to a restaurant. Avijit Das, the restaurant manager, said they will keep it closed for now, according to police instructions. Locals have requested a security arrangement in the area. Bimal Saha, a local, said, “I was passing through around 8 pm when I found that armed cops had surrounded the guest house. The place is about 50 m from my house.”Ajit Thakur, who sells vegetables in front of the guest house, said: “I was asked to move to a safe corner. They brought out the criminals one by one. The last one was injured and wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher.”
