Kolhapur: A gang of five men barged into the house of Sangli Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) director Maruti Bandgar and shot dead his 14-year-old son, Vedant, from point-blank range around 6.30pm on Thursday, triggering panic in the city’s Abhaynagar SBI colony area.“The assailant caught hold of the victim by his collar and placed a firearm below the temple close to his right eye and fired a round, grievously injuring the victim,” Sangli superintendent of police Tushar Doshi said. “The boy was taken to a hospital where the doctors declared him dead. What prompted the firing would be clear once all the suspects are arrested.”By Friday evening, Sangli police’s local crime branch arrested Kupwad resident Atul Vaydande, one of the five suspected assailants, although the main suspect, identified by police as Nilesh Vithoba Gadade, also from Kupwad, was at large, along with the three others. The suspects have been named in the FIR based on a complaint by the victim’s uncle, police said.Police said Gadade has previous criminal cases to his name and, along with another suspect Kiran Shankar Lokhande, was among the seven people arrested in the brutal murder of NCP Sangli district vice-president Dattatreya Patole in a company at MIDC Kupwad on July 10, 2020. Gadade was out on bail granted by the Supreme Court in July last year, while Lokhande and other co-accused got a similar relief earlier.Doshi said, “The victim’s grandfather, Balasaheb Bandgar, is a former director of Sangli APMC and a leader of Head Loaders’ (mathadi workers) organisation. On the evening of June 10, Gadade and two aides visited the house of mathadi worker Laxman Kharat at a village near Jat over a dispute.”“Kharat works at the railway goods yard in Arag near Miraj. His wife alleged that her husband was away from home and the trio threatened her with dire consequences at gunpoint before leaving the place,” the SP said.“On June 11, Kharat reported the matter to Balasaheb Bandgar and the two, along with other mathadi workers, reached the Jat police station that afternoon and ensured that a criminal complaint was lodged against Gadade and his aides for alleged threatening and other charges. Gadade nursed a grudge against Balasaheb over this and, along with his four accomplices, reached Bandgar’s house the same evening,” Doshi said.Police said Gadade and his aides reached the house in a four-wheeler and entered the porch where Vedant was playing. The intruders kept asking for Vedant’s grandfather before opening fire, police added.The police have recovered an empty case of the bullet fired from the scene of crime. They were in the process of recording statements of the witnesses who were present in the house at the time of the incident, including Vedant’s uncle, Sandip Balu Bandgar (33), who is the complainant in the case. Balasaheb Bandgar and Vedant’s father, Maruti Bandgar, were not at home at the time of the incident.Separate police teams have been deployed to trace and arrest Gadade and three others, and investigators were also going through CCTV camera footage collected from places around the scene of crime.Asked if Gadade’s arrest in the complaint lodged by Laxman Kharat at Jat police station could have prevented the boy’s murder, Doshi said, “Our teams were constantly looking for Gadade but his location could not be traced as he had kept his mobile phone switched off.”Patole Murder CaseA Sangli sessions court on Sept 29, 2020, and the Bombay high court on Feb 6, 2025, had rejected Gadade’s regular bail applications in the Patole murder case. Gadade, however, moved the Supreme Court, which ordered on July 18, 2025, his release on bail on grounds of parity as the other six accused were granted a similar relief earlier. The Patole murder trial is at the stage of part-heard evidence.On Feb 23 this year, a Sangli sessions court rejected separate applications by the complainant, the public prosecutor and the police in the Patole murder case, seeking cancellation of Gadade’s bail over alleged violation of bail conditions.