For the sec­ond time in weeks, busi­ness­man Ra­jesh Heer­alal sur­vived an at­tack against his life when his killer’s gun jammed af­ter the first three shots on Thurs­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing the the­o­ry that Heer­alal, 33, of Ch­agua­nas, a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer who man­u­fac­tures his own de­ter­gents, may have hit on his head which was put out by a com­peti­tor.

While po­lice con­tin­ued to search for Heer­alal’s at­tack­er yes­ter­day, it was sus­pect­ed he was a hired hit­man.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port, Heer­alal and a work­er were car­ry­ing out sales out­side the Cher­ish Su­per­mar­ket along Latchoos Road, Pe­nal, at the time of the at­tack. While of­fload­ing liq­uid de­ter­gent from a truck, a man walked up, pulled out a gun that was hid­den in his pants and fired three shots at close range. Heer­alal was hit on his thigh, fore­arm and shoul­der, but as the gun­man at­tempt­ed to de­liv­er the kill shot the gun jammed. Sur­veil­lance footage showed that when the gun jammed the gun­man ran off, al­though still at­tempt­ing to fire more shots.

Pe­nal po­lice re­spond­ed to a re­port of the shoot­ing and Heer­alal was tak­en to the Pe­nal Health Cen­tre where he was treat­ed and trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Po­lice said he re­mained there in a sta­ble con­di­tion up to last night.

The gun­man was able to get away but po­lice were able to get a de­scrip­tion of him through the CCTV footage. The gun­man wore a blue jack­et, blue three-quar­ter den­im pants, a pair of slip­pers, a black cap and a pair of sun­glass­es.

In March, Heer­alal was in Bam­boo Set­tle­ment, Val­sayn, when a gun­man al­so at­tempt­ed to shoot him. Heer­alal got away on that oc­ca­sion. The at­tack­er then was dressed sim­i­lar­ly to the gun­man in yes­ter­day’s at­tack.