75-year-old man gunned down in Gandhinagar

AHMEDABAD: A 75-year-old man was gunned down on Sunday by unknown assailants near Koba village in Gandhinagar, in the capital’s high security zone, just 1.5km from the

Gujarat

BJP headquarters, Kamalam.

Gandhinagar police are clueless about the incident, as they have no leads so far. Sources in the police said a

protection racket

could be a factor behind the murder of Keshavlal Patel, who ran construction materials business at an open plot near Preksha Bharti Ashram in Koba.

According to the FIR filed by Patel’s son, Mahendra, he got a call on Sunday morning informing him that his father was lying unconscious at place of business. He rushed to the spot and found his father lying on a stretcher bleeding heavily from the head.

As Mahendra was unaware of how his father was wounded, he took him to Gandhinagar Civil Hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead.

“I saw wounds on his head and below his right eye. After the postmortem, doctors told me that my father was killed by a bullet,” states the FIR filed by Mahendra, a resident of

Shahibaug

, who runs iron and steel trading company in Naroda.

Police officials said Keshavlal Patel sold steel bars and concrete at the open plot in Koba for the last ten years. He and his wife lived at Rupavati Park Society in Koba.

Inspector K K Desai of Infocity police station, where the FIR was lodged, said, “We have not got any clue so far and cannot yet concluded if there was a personal rivalry or any other issue behind the murder.”

The preliminary investigation revealed that Keshavlal was shot in the head from behind, but there is no concrete lead as there were no CCTV cameras near the plot.