Residents of Behala spend sleepless nights

kolkata: less than a week after notorious extortionist khoka was arrested for the attempted murder of a local promoter, residents of behala are spending sleepless nights again, thanks to yet another extortion gang. shanti ranjan ghoshal (72), a resident of aravinda pally in behala, sustained bullet injuries on tuesday night after three miscreants attacked him and shot at him below the knee.ghoshal is now out of danger, but the district police sources say the attack once again indicated a promoter-criminal nexus. asp (industrial) south 24 parganas, gyanwant singh said, late on tuesday evening ghoshal heard someone knocking on his front door. as soon as he opened the door, he found three unknown people waiting there. ghoshal told the police one of them told him, "toke chai" (we want you), when he asked them about their intentions. immediately afterwards one of them whipped out a revolver and shot at him. "it is obvious that their intentions were to scare him into submission. if they wanted to kill him they could easily have done so," singh said. ghoshal has nine brothers and sisters but is the sole inheritor of a piece of land as well as an ancestral home. a few months back he offered the anscentral plot to a promoter for construction of a new building. of late though relations between the two had been strained over the share of profitability of the flats. the police is suspicious about promoter tapan mitra's role in the attack as he has an antecedence of hobnobbing with extortionists. but mitra claimed he never received any threat calls nor did he known extortionists. he also claimed this project was his maiden venture. eom