KOLKATA: A 66-year-old jeweller was found strangled to death with a telephone cable in a guest house less than 800 metres from his Lee Road home in Bhowanipore, south Kolkata, late on Monday.
Shantilal Vaid’s family claimed they had received a ransom demand of Rs 25 lakh earlier in the evening, which they even paid.
Vaid had left home — a posh condo — between 6pm and 6.45pm, ostensibly to buy paan for himself, something he usually did, after returning from work in Burrabazar, along with his son, his family told the cops. That was the last time his family members saw him alive, they claimed.
The family said they had received the ransom call around 8.30pm on the mobile phone of Vaid’s son. The call was from a landline number and reportedly lasted around 21 minutes. It took the family around three hours to arrange the cash. This was paid, as instructed, at the south gate of Victoria Memorial around 11pm. The abductor, they said, came and left in a taxi after showing them Vaid’s cell phone, saying he would return home in the next 30 minutes.
It was when Vaid hadn’t returned past midnight that the family informed the Bhowanipore cops. A case of kidnapping for ransom and criminal intimidation was registered by the police, who began tracking Vaid’s mobile phone.
In less than two hours, the cops reached Fanindra Guest House, near the crossing of Asutosh Mukherjee Road-Sambhunath Pandit Street, by tracing the technical leads from Vaid’s mobile. The cops opened a room on the third floor, where they found Vaid’s body on the bed. There was a mark on his neck, suggesting he might have been strangled using a telephone cable.
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The police have started a murder probe and are waiting the postmortem to pinpoint the time of death, which would corroborate their suspicion that he died before the ransom was paid, said sources. The investigators said several pieces of evidence had been seized from the guest house room.
The cops said their probe has shown that Vaid had avoided his usual route to buy paan, having chosen to move towards Asutosh Mukherjee Road instead of Woodburn Road.
The police said that detailed questioning of the guest house manager revealed that Vaid had arrived there in the evening, along with another person.
“According to hotel authorities, the second unidentified person introduced Vaid as his uncle and said he wanted to book a room in their name. Later on, this person left the hotel somewhere between late evening and night without checking out. Familymembers of Vaid informed us that they had received ransom calls that evening,” said joint CP (crime) Murlidhar Sharma. The police said thatVaid’s family had told them that the initial ransom demand had been for Rs 1 crore. Ashok Vaid, nephew of the victim, said: “We had a fairly long first conversation when the accused demanded the money. We were threatened that he would be harmed if we didn’t do as told.”
The accused came in a taxi sometime between 10.30pm and 11pm near Victoria, collected the money and showed the victim’s phone to his family. “He promised us that my uncle would be back home in 30 minutes. When we could not trace him even after an hour, we went to the police,” Ashok added.
Police said they suspect that the victim knew the accused. “We have collected CCTV footage from a number of spots and have reason to believe that he is not from Kolkata, but another city,” said an officer.
