While the police only said an alert had been sounded throughout the State and a watch mounted on the entry/exit points to the district, official sources told Express Newsline that the incident was an indication of the deepening mafia involvement in real estate affairs.

According to eye-witnesses, a scooter-borne youth, aged about 23 and dressed in a cotton jacket, fired a single shot at pointblank range as Patel's Maruti Esteem came out of his 3, Utkanth Society, residence and neared the Alkapuri Club around 10.30 a.m. The builder was seated next to the driver; such was the force of the bullet that it went through the rolled-up window and pierced through Patel's jaw before grazing his driver on the left shoulder.

Panic gripped the locality even as two real estate businessmen -- reportedly from Ahmedabad and Mumbai -- travelling in the backseat alerted his family members and, along with the businessman's nephew Ashok, rushed him to the Bhailal Amin Hospital. The tension was apparent among hospital staff and the police as well; policemen have been deployed at Patel's bedside as well.

The driver, Ghulam Mohammed Pathan, meanwhile, was reported to be out of danger.

Late in the evening, Ashok Patel was learnt to have filed a police complaint at the Sayajigunj station. A police spokesman said that the complainant had alleged that Patel's relations with some rival builders -- namely Jayesh Dave, Kirti Soni and Himanshu Desai -- had soured in the recent past over a plot of land in Vadodara.

Though eyewitnesses tipped off the police about the assailant's scooter number, the police said inquiries with the Regional Transport Office indicated it was false.

According to sources, Patel, and a builder by the name of Ranu Bharwad, had been involved in a number of disputes with a number of top builders from city and one from Mumbai; a couple of cases over allegedly forged land-deals are also pending against Patel in the Gorwa and J P Road police stations.

This is about the fifth sensational land-related crime to be committed in the city in the past five years.

Police Commissioner J Mahapatra told Express Newsline that the police had made some headway in the case and opined that it was most probably a planned murder by a professional assailant, presumably from outside the State. He refused to elaborate further, saying the matter was under investigation.