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Updated: Nov 20, 2019 15:09 IST

A day after 26-year-old man was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne men in Amritsar district, a gangster on Wednesday took to Facebook to claim responsibility for the murder. In a Facebook post, Harwinder Singh Sandhu said the man had been killed due to an old enmity.

Mandeep Singh of Pandori village was returning home on a scooter on Tuesday evening when he was intercepted by two men on a motorcycle at around 6 pm, police said. The two suspects, who are yet to be identified by the police, fired at him. Eight bullets hit Mandeep and he died on the spot.

Harwinder Singh Sandhu’s confession, or the attempt to claim credit for the hit, came soon after on social media.

It is not unusual for gangsters in Punjab to use social media to attempt to build an aura of glamour around their gangs or claim credit for attacks, often on their rivals.

And much to the discomfort of the police, they do have a fan following running into thousands. The state police has attempted to get social media giant Facebook to take down these pages but hasn’t gotten far.

In a Facebook post, Sandhu, who the police say is gangster based in Punjab’s eight biggest city Batala, said his gang had carried out the attack.

“The man who was murdered in Pandori was killed by us. We committed the murder for our honour. It was our old enmity with this man (Mandeep). If we can open 25 rounds, we can also fire 100 rounds. If anyone makes such a mistake in future, he will suffer a similar fate. Police should act but no innocent should be booked in this case,” Sandhu’s post said.

Senior superintendent of police, Amritsar (Rural), Vikramjit Singh Duggal said that the police are on the lookout for the assailants. “We are looking into this angle, too,” he said.