The Assam police on Monday night gunned down a former Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) jawan hours after he had killed his wife, 21-year-old son and a maternal uncle with a .32 pistol.

Sanjay Das had gone into hiding after killing the trio at his residence in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh district on Monday.

The police traced him to an abandoned building of the Fisheries Department close to midnight. He allegedly opened fire on the police personnel when they asked him to surrender, leading to a gunfight.

Dibrugarh’s Superintendent of Police Sreejith T. said that “after the killings, we found out he was hiding in the Sukanpukhuri area of the district. A police team traced him, cordoned off the place and started negotiating. But he was not done with his killing spree and lobbed a few stun grenades.”

The ex-SSB man opened fire when the police team moved in. He was killed in retaliatory fire, the police said.

While other members of the man’s extended family said he was “alcoholic and mentally unstable”, police said he had a history of criminality.