Did oil mafia order Mid-Day journalist's killing?

Police probing the murder of senior journalist Jyotirmoy Dey on Sunday said the killing could be the handiwork of people associated with the oil mafia even as Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan directed the city police chief to arrest those responsible for the crime at the earliest.

A day after Dey was shot dead by unidentified assailants in suburban Powai sending shock waves in the media fraternity, the Chief Minister on Sunday held an emergency meeting at his residence and took stock of the investigations.

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A senior police officer said on condition of anonymity that "we are probing the incident from all angles. But our line of investigation is going towards checking the possible involvement of people associated with the oil mafia".

The journalist had extensively written a number of news reports on the oil mafia, which may have triggered them to eliminate him.

"We have a reason to believe that the killers must have been hired from outside Mumbai or maybe from outside Maharashtra," the officer said, adding four teams have been formed by the Crime Branch to probe the matter on a priority basis.

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The way the killing was executed, it was very clear that the assailants had made a perfect plan to eliminate the journalist, the officer said.

Meanwhile, the post-mortem report prepared by government-run J J Hospital says that five bullets were fired at Dey, who was working as an investigative editor with Mid-Day. While four bullets pierced through his body, one bullet had got stuck in his right chest.

"Three bullets hit his left arm and one his left part of the chest. One bullet had got stuck in his right part of the chest," said the officer.