BANGALORE, Dec 28: An unidentified gunman shot dead one man and wounded four other people with an automatic rifle at a top Indian science university on Wednesday before making an escape.

The attack took place outside a conference hall of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where the victims were attending a seminar.

“It could have been to create panic,” Narayana Gowda, a top Bangalore police official, told reporters. “There is a red alert all over the city. We are checking suspected vehicles and people.”

The dead man was a professor who died of his wounds on the way to hospital.

Bangalore is a high technology hub in the south of India that is home to more than 1,500 information technology companies, among them dozens of global firms.

Indian police have in the past said that some of these technology firms faced threats from Kashmiri militants.

However, police in Bangalore said they could not immediately comment on the identity of Wednesday’s attacker, who is suspected to have escaped from the leafy campus. —Reuters