Within hours of a gruesome double murder and burglary of 16 kg of gold at the house of a jeweller in Sirkazhi in the early hours of Wednesday, police teams tracked down three intruders of North Indian origin at Erukkur and gunned down one of them for allegedly resisting arrest.

The Hindi-speaking masked burglars had hacked to death Asha (45) and Akhil (28), wife and son of a jeweller, Dhanaraj and inflicted grievous injuries on him and his daughter-in-law before escaping with the booty in a car.

The police had found that the gang had also taken along the hard disk of the CCTV camera. The investigating teams had found the car abandoned at Melamathur on the bypass road.

Acting on information that the gang was in hiding in Erukkur village, a few kilometres away, police teams rounded them up and confiscated the entire gold haul and two pistols.

While arresting the armed gang, one person had reportedly tried to attack the police personnel, who, in turn, opened fire in self-defence.

The police are in the process of establishing the identity of the burglars.