The Hindu : Front Page : Shoe baron gunned down in Jamshedpur

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Saturday, Nov 03, 2007
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Shoe baron gunned down in Jamshedpur

— Photo: PTI

Anguished: Wife of the owner of Sree Leathers Ashish Dey being consoled by relatives after he was shot dead by unknown persons in Jamshedpur on Friday.

Jamshedpur: The co-owner of a leading shoe company, Ashish Dey, was gunned down on Friday by motorcycle-borne assailants in Sakchi area of the steel city.

Mr. Dey (50), whose company Sree Leathers has a chain of stores across the country and in the U.S., was on his way to the company’s first showroom at Sakchi here when he was fired at from close range, Deputy Superintendent of Police (city) Madhusudhan Bari said. He was rushed to the Tata Main Hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.

Mr. Bari said Mr. Dey had been getting threat calls for the past three months, even from the northeast, and he had lodged a complaint with the police.

The refusal to yield to extortionists’ demands cound have have been behind the killing, he said.

All adjoining police stations were alerted and bordering areas sealed to track the assailants, police said, adding the modus operandi of the assailants pointed to the involvement of an organised criminal gang.

In Kolkata, where Sree Leathers is a popular brand and has several showrooms, the family refused to comment on the incident.

Mr. Dey, the youngest son of the family, was in-charge of the 40-year-old Sakchi showroom, while the eldest brother Shekhar is looking after another shoe shop at downtown Bistupur in the steel city.

The second brother Sudhangshu is the head of the showrooms in Kolkata.

Shekhar Dey has admitted that his brother received several threat calls demanding extortion, but ruled out the involvement of extremist groups, including the ULFA, in the killing.

“There is no involvement of any extremist group including the ULFA in the killing. We have been receiving threat calls for the last nine to ten months months demanding money, which Ashish refused to pay,” Mr. Shekhar told journalists at his residence.

Asked about the demands, he said they ran into crores of rupees.

The BJP and several organisations have called a Jamshedpur bandh on Saturday in protest against the killing of Mr. Dey.

The party’s East Singhbhum District Committee president Vinod Kumar Singh told newsmen that the bandh was to mount pressure on the Madhu Koda government to arrest the killers.

Mr. Singh said the deteriorating law and order in Jharkhand was making businessmen and industrialists feel insecure as extortion and kidnapping had become the order of the day. — PTI

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