Missing exec: Cops still clueless

ASANSOL/DHANBAD: It's been over 72 hours now since Uday Shankar Chandra, executive director, Hotel Skylark and the Johal Group of Companies, went missing from near Kulti, but the police are still clueless about his whereabouts. Senior officers are unsure whether the top executive has been abducted for ransom or there is some other mystery behind his disappearance.
Chandra was on his way home to Thakurpukur, Behala, from Dhanbad on Saturday afternoon when he could be contacted last. Since then, there has been no trace of Chandra, his personal driver Dilip Kumar Singh or the Hyundai Verna they were travelling in, along the national highway.
Asutosh Bagchi, the general manager of Hotel Skylark, who was the last person to speak to Chandra around 1.06 pm on that fateful day, said that his boss was then crossing the Kulti bypass and hoped to be home by 5 pm. Tracking of mobile towers revealed that Chandra was in the Kulti area till 2.25 pm. After that, both his mobile phones, as well as the one used by his driver were switched off.
Police can say for sure that Chandra's vehicle didn't cross the toll plaza at Garui on NH2, which is in the Asansol North police station area. There is no record at the toll plaza to show that the car, with registration number JH10N 3430, had crossed towards Asansol on Saturday afternoon. The police are certain that Chandra never got a chance to enter Asansol. He was probably waylaid somewhere before the Chowringhee crossing at Kulti. This theory is sound, if one were to rule out the possibility of Chandra taking the old GT Road from Chirkunda-Barakar-Kulti. But then, his associates said that the Chandra never took that route. Family members believe that the top executive may have been abducted in Kulti, taken to a temporary hideout and then whisked away to Jharkhand or Bihar.
Chandra's elder son Rahul met R K Dhan, SP of Dhanbad, on Tuesday and expressed the family's concern at the progress that the police have made so far. Dhan told TOI that no breakthrough has been made as yet though special teams have been set up for the purpose. "The family is yet to receive any ransom call," he said.
It is a shame that it took Rahul nearly 48 hours to lodge an FIR at the Bank More police station in Dhanbad. As always, the missing person's son shuttled between one thana and the other as cops argued over jurisdiction. The Kulti police were not ready to accept that Chandra went missing from their jurisdiction. G S Rath, the DG of Jharkhand Police, was not too happy at this attitude of the Kulti police.
Chandra's wife Mahamaya, who used to live in Canada with their younger son, is rushing back to Kolkata, family members said. Colleagues and associates said that Chandra was soft-spoken and well liked. He was doing very well in his professional life, they said. The top management of the Johal Group, which is headquartered in Kolkata, also expressed their anxiety at the incident. The executive director would return to Kolkata every fortnight along NH2 but had never mentioned any threat.
A CID team from Kolkata visited Kulti but couldn't make any breakthrough. This is not the first time that such incidents have occurred in the industrial belt. After a spate of abductions in Asansol, the then SP of Burdwan, Piyush Pandey, had formed a four-member anti-kidnapping task force. Recently, this force had rescued Ajay Kumar, the abducted assistant manager of ECL from the clutches of abductors in Dhanbad. Of late, the force has been disbanded with three of its members Debajyoti Saha, Sankha Biswas and Santanu Mukherjee having been transferred to other districts. The fourth Shankar Ghorai is now the officer-in-charge of Ranigunj police station.
The abduction group of late Vijay Singh of Munger has been very active at the Jharkhand - West Bengal porous border at NH2 in recent times. They have abducted prominent industrialists and businessman of Asansol area- Sanjay Maundia, Naresh Maundia, Swapan Tewary, and Shankar Agarwal in recent times. Vijay Singh's gang members- Santosh Singh, Babban Singh, Sanjay Singh are still active. The other notorious abductors of Bihar- Jharkhand who are active here are Guddu Shukla and Ahmed Khan, according to Jharkhand police sources.
The morale of Asansol police is at all time low after the triple murder case at Kachari Road on 2 June. The ASP, two DSPs have been transferred but at present the entire district lacks an intelligent and tough officer with through crime work who can crack such high profile and complex cases.
Rajendra Prasad Khaitan, president of South Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industries has threatened to stop giving taxes to the government if the state and centre fails to secure businessman and industrialists of Asansol-Durgapur region. In a fax message to chief minister Mamata Banerjee he has urged immediate setting up of a separate police comissionerate at Asansol- Durgapur. with police station and camera at Asansol- Dhanbad border. The incident is embarrassing for the state government which has been scouting for private investments from outside as it has happened in Asansol, the home town of law minister Maloy Ghatak.