Bar­rack­pore vil­lagers re­joiced yes­ter­day af­ter a man, ac­cused of killing a rob­ber, was re­leased from po­lice cus­tody. The rob­ber had ter­rorised and chopped fam­i­ly mem­bers of 52-year-old Shamshad Ali, of Bar­rack­pore, last week Thurs­day. How­ev­er, his joy­ful re­union with friends and rel­a­tives was short­lived as the re­leased man had to be tak­en for med­ical treat­ment af­ter his blood pres­sure went up. The man's wife said she was re­lieved that no charges were laid against him.

She said he was still trau­ma­tised by the or­deal and was now wor­ried about the safe­ty of oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers in­clud­ing her son-in-law, Roger Ho­sein, 24. Wip­ing away tears, she said: "The po­lice had to do their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and that was why he was in­side the sta­tion for so long. "I was hap­py the po­lice re­alised that he did not do any­thing wrong. All he did was pro­tect his fam­i­ly." Ho­sein, a fish­er­man, was chopped on his face, head and hands. Last Thurs­day, at around 4.45 pm, two thieves fol­lowed the woman through her open front door and chopped Ho­sein as he slept on a so­fa.

They al­so beat the woman and threat­ened to kill her chil­dren. The thieves stole an undis­closed sum of mon­ey and jew­el­ry be­fore flee­ing. The man was was dri­ving up the road when he saw the thieves and his daugh­ter scream­ing and cov­ered in blood. As the rob­bers waved their cut­lass­es at him, he struck one of them with the car. Oth­er vil­lagers then tied the rob­bers to a car.

One of the rob­bers, Ken­ton Con­tara, died on the way to hos­pi­tal. Po­lice said Con­tara was a well-known thief who was want­ed in con­nec­tion with more than a dozen crimes in the South­ern Di­vi­sion. His ac­com­plice, who re­mained in po­lice cus­tody yes­ter­day, had been re­leased from jail just days be­fore the in­ci­dent af­ter serv­ing time for rob­bery.