Nawada Superintendent of Police B B Prasad was on Sunday sacked following the killing of 14 people in gang war in the past four days.

At a joint press conference in Patna, Bihar Home Secretary B K Haldar and Director General of Police D P Ojha said Prasad was removed following several complaints against him and his failure to check rising crime graph in the district.

On Saturday night, in the continuing feud between two criminal gangs over sand mining contracts, seven people, including the father of a Bihar MLA and the relative of Jharkhand minister, were shot dead near Kochgaon in Nawada district.

Kailash Singh, father of independent MLA from Warsaliganj Aruna Devi, and Nunulal Singh, uncle of Jharkhand Mines  Minister Ravindra Rai, and five others were allegedly killed by the Ashok Mahato gang, official sources said on Sunday.

Some armed men intercepted the vehicles in which the victims were traveling at Mehandipur More near Kochgaon, the sources said.

They ordered the women to alight and then opened fire killing five persons on the spot and seriously wounding two, including a six-year-old boy, who died later.

IGP (Operations) Neelmani told PTI that the killings were in retaliation to the February 12 slaying of seven labourers at Dariapur and Rampur-Ganeshnagar villages allegedly by the Akhilesh Singh gang.

The labourers were hired by Ashok Mahato.

Akhilesh, the husband of Aruna Devi, currently lodged in the Beur Model Jail in Patna, and Mahato are locked in a bloody feud, which has claimed dozens of lives from both sides in the past few years.

Following the killings, Aruna Devi's supporters vandalised shops and damaged six buses at the Warsaliganj market.

Security was beefed up and patrolling intensified in view of the tension in the area.

The BJP has called for a shutdown on Monday to protest the Rabri Devi government's 'failure' to check spiralling crime.

The Nawada district administration ordered suspension of train services on the Nawada-Kiul section of the East-Central Railway as a precautionary measure.

State's Director General of Police D P Ojha said a special task force led by DIG (Magadh range) N C Dhondiyal was conducting raids to apprehend the killers.

Meanwhile, Commandant of the Darbhanga-based 13 Bihar Military Police Bacchu Singh Meena will take over as the new SP of Nawada.