A day after some unidentified persons opened fire on a police patrol team, injuring a passer-by at Paldi, the Ellisbridge police said on Monday that three miscreants were involved in the crime, as against four reported earlier.

While one of them was nabbed at the crime scene, the two others had managed to escape. Now, the local police have sent separate teams to Vadodara and Surat in search of the absconders. All three, according to the police, are burglars who were active in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat.

Meanwhile, the arrested person, identified as Babloo alias Sanju, was remanded to police custody for two weeks by the Metropolitan Court on Monday. The two absconders have been identified as Jagdish Kanga and Arun Deshmukh.

The police said the three are part of an inter-state gang, which is responsible for a series of house break-ins in the city in the recent past. “A couple of house break-ins were reported from the area near Ramji Mandir in the last few days. On Sunday evening, we got a tip-off that some burglars were moving around the Ramji Mandir crossroads,” said Inspector H M Kundalia.

He added: “I sent a team to the spot to keep a vigil. When the patrolling team spotted three suspicious persons and called them for questioning, they tried to escape on their motorbikes. The team followed them, and the chase resulted in the encounter.”

Kundalia said they recovered a pistol made at the Indian Ordinance Factory, from the arrested man. They suspect the trio might have got it during one of the burglaries. The police said that while all three were carrying pistols, only Babloo had fired two rounds.

During interrogation, the police said, Babloo confessed to have committed a number of burglaries in the city, including the one at Dr Nalin Gheewala's residence at Dutt Society a couple of days ago. Babloo told the police that they had stayed at Hotel Pranjal Residency in Maninagar. Later, the police searched the hotel and found cash and jewellery worth Rs 1 lakh, which were stolen from Dr Gheewala's residence.