Direct searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have pushed the lower limits on the masses of the gluinos ($\tilde{g}$) and the squarks of the first two generations ($\tilde{q}$) to the TeV range. On the other hand, the limits are rather weak for the third generation squarks and masses around a few hundred GeV are still allowed. A comparatively light third generation of squarks is also consistent with the lightest Higgs boson with mass $\sim$ 125 GeV. In view of this, we consider the direct production of a pair of sbottom quarks ($\tilde{b}_1$) at the LHC and study their collider signatures. We focus on the scenario where the $\tilde{b}_1$ is not the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) and hence can also decay to channels other than the commonly considered decay mode to a bottom quark and the lightest neutralino ($\tilde��^0_1$). For example, we consider the decay modes containing a bottom quark and the second neutralino ($\tilde{b}_1 \to b \tilde��^0_2$) and/or a top quark and the lightest chargino ($\tilde{b}_1 \to t \tilde��^{\pm}_1$) following the leptonic decays of the neutralino, chargino and the top quark giving rise to a 4 leptons ($\ell$) + 2 $b$-jets + missing transverse momentum ($\PMET$) final state. We show that an sbottom mass $\lesssim$ 550 GeV can be probed in this channel at the 14 TeV LHC energy with integrated luminosity $\lesssim$ 100 fb$^{-1}$.

Clarificatory Notes added, comparison with CMS analysis added, Typos corrected, Version accepted for publication at European Physical Journal C. 12 Pages, 4 eps figures, 2 tables