BODH GAYA, FEBRUARY 5 Backing his team to the hilt, CBI director U S Misra today said the death of two suspects in the Satyendra Dubey murder case had returned the gaze of the probe team to the likelihood of a mafia conspiracy behind the killing of the NHAI engineer who had complained of corruption in a Bihar stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral highway project.

The CBI had at one stage suggested that Dubey’s case may have been a murder-for-robbery but the deaths of suspects Mukendra Paswan and Sheonath Sao, a day after their interrogation by the agency’s probe team, had again returned the spotlight to the mafia conspiracy possibility.

Misra, who rushed to Gaya after the two suspects died under mysterious CBI: We’re now looking into mafia hand in Dubey murder circumstances, said his team had ‘‘adequate evidence’’ to explore the conspiracy angle: ‘‘Names have come up and the agency is looking into it. At this stage, we cannot disclose any leads.’’

Bihar police officials too now believe that ‘‘big conspirators’’ may have been behind the killings. A senior police official said: ‘‘It cannot be written off as a simple road robbery case.’’

Misra, flanked by Gaya SP and DM, gave his probe team a clean chit in the case involving the deaths of the two suspects. ‘‘My inquiry here showed that the Gaya CBI team had absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of the two persons.’’