Kolkata: A 66-year-old jewelry was found strangled to death with a telephone cable at a guest house less than 800 meters from his Lee Road house in Bhowanipore, South Kolkata, Monday night.
The Vaid Shantilal family claimed that they had received a ransom request RS 25 lakh before at night, which they even paid.
Vaid has left the house – luxury condo – between 6pm and 6.45pm, as if buying paan for himself, something he usually did, after returning from work in Burrabazar, along with his son, his family told the police.
That was the last time his family members saw him alive, they claimed.
The family said they had received a ransom guess around 8:30 a.m.
on the Vaid men’s cellphone.
The call from the home telephone number and reportedly lasts around 21 minutes.
It took a family of about three hours to arrange cash.
It was paid, as was ordered, at the South Gate Victoria Memorial at around 11pm.
The Furiuctor, they said, came and went in a taxi after showing a Vaid cellphone, said he would return home in the next 30 minutes.
When Vaid did not pass through midnight that the family told Bhowanipore police.
The kidnapping case for ransom and criminal intimidation was registered by the police, which began tracking Vaid cellphones.
In less than two hours, the police reached the Fanindra Guest House, close to Asutosh Mukherjee Road-Sambhunath Pandit Street, by exploring the technical lead from Vaid’s Mobile.
The police opened a room on the third floor, where they found a vaid body on the bed.
There was a sign on his neck, suggesting he might be strangled using a telephone cable.
‘Arriving at the Guest House with Debobrata Police Shomethe Others have started an inquiry of murder and is waiting for Postmortem to show the time of death, which will strengthen their suspicions that he died before the ransom was paid, said the source.
The researchers say some evidence has been confiscated from the guest living room.
The police said their investigation had shown that Vaid had avoided his usual route to buy Paan, after choosing to move towards Asutosh Mukherjee Road instead of Woodburn Road.
The police said that detailed questions about the guesthouse manager revealed that Vaid had arrived there at night, along with other people.
“According to the hotel authority, the second unknown person introduced Vaid as his uncle and said he wanted to book a room with their name.
Then, this person left the hotel somewhere between late at night and night without checking out.
Familiarmembers of Vaid told us that they had received A ransom call that night, “said CP together (crime) Murlidhar Sharma.
Police said the family who had told them that the initial ransom demand was for Rs 1 Crore.
Ashok Vaid, the victim’s nephew, said: “We have a first long conversation when the defendant demanded that money.
We were threatened that he would be harmed if we did not do it as told.” The accusation came in a taxi between 10:30 a.m.
and 11 nights nearby Victoria, collected the money and showed the victim’s telephone to his family.
“He promised us that my uncle would return home in 30 minutes.
When we couldn’t track it even after an hour, we went to the police,” Ashok added.
The police said they were suspicious that the victim knew the defendant.
“We have collected CCTV recordings from a number of places and have reasons to believe that he is not from Kolkata, but another city,” said an officer.