PATNA, GAYA:DECEMBER 13 Sixteen days after Satyendra Dubey was murdered, the police recovered his Panasonic cellphone yesterday from a rickshaw-puller’s house in Gaya.

Whether he’s the same rickshaw-puller who, as reported in The Indian Express on December 8, was the one who first informed Dubey’s domestic help of the murder isn’t clear because police said today that they are trying to track him down.

No one has been arrested so far but two people have been detained for interrogation.

Incidentally, the recovery of the phone comes after a ‘‘chance call’’ Dubey’s stenographer Anurag Singh made to his number on December 7 and found, to his surprise, that the phone was alive. Police have interrogated Singh to find out if it was more than curiosity that prompted him to make that call.

What course the police probe will now take is unclear—the CBI took charge earlier this week but hasn’t started its investigation yet—but top sources in the police have told The Sunday Express that for ‘‘tactical reasons,’’ two lines of investigation are open: one, Dubey was killed by the contractor mafia who would stand to lose if he continued in his job. And, two, that his killing was just ‘‘murder for robbery.’’ The latter is a theory Dubey’s brother Dhananjay Dubey doubts: ‘‘If it were a robbery, they should have found his briefcase and his wallet too. He didn’t have anything valuable on him except a cellphone.’’

Moreover, there are key missing links in the case: Dubey’s official pick-up car developing a snag on the night of the murder, the discovery of his body at a distance which indicated it had been moved after the murder, the absence of blood at the scene of the crime.

For the record, the police are calling the case ‘‘open.’’

When asked about the robbery theory, DIG Magadh Range N.C. Dhoundial said: ‘‘Conspiracy to crime is not the right way to investigate. We have investigated from crime to conspiracy and made a breakthrough. We have recovered the cellphone and obtained print-outs of calls made and received before and after the murder. We expect to get valuable clues.’’ Were the police also investigating the construction mafia behind the corruption complaints Dubey made in his letters? Dhoundial said: ‘‘If we had gone and checked all the files and people who may have been adversely affected by Dubey’s actions, I’m not sure what we may have been led into. The surest fact we knew was that he was carrying a mobile and we took that route.’’