A lone Honda City has been virtually buried alive for eight years in a sealed underground parking facility in New Market.
In 2016, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) sealed the underground facility meant for 240 cars for inadequate fire-fighting infrastructure. All vehicles, except this one, had exited the facility once the shutdown order was issued.
The mayoral council of the CMC approved the reopening of the parking lot last week.
The Telegraph on Tuesday tracked down the car’s owner, Alauddin Ahmed, who runs a travel agency. He said he did not get a formal notice about the impending shutdown from the parking facility where he had rented space.
Abhijit Chatterjee, a senior official of Simpark Infrastructure Private Ltd, the company that ran the parking facility, told this newspaper that there was not enough time to serve a formal notice to car owners and that when they tried to contact the owner of the Honda City later, he could not be contacted.
Ahmed said he rented space for four of his cars at the parking facility and never missed paying rent. “Suddenly one evening, when one of my drivers went to park a car, he found the facility had been sealed. That was how I first learned about the shutdown in 2016,” said Ahmed, who runs his travel agency from an office at 21 Market Street in central Calcutta.
According to a receipt furnished by Ahmed, he last paid Rs 6,412 as rent to “Simpark Infrastructure (P) Ltd” on February 19, 2016.
Ahmed added that after hearing about the shutdown he sent his driver to recover the Honda City from the parking space but all four gates were sealed by then.
“I was just lucky that my other cars were outside at the time of the shutdown. Around two years later, when the company tried to revive the parking lot, I went to the spot and requested the car be handed back to me. This time I was told that the machine needed to lift my car was not working. I was assured that an engineer would repair the system and my car would be taken out. Nothing happened even after that,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed “lost hope” after that.
The car, which Ahmed had purchased second-hand in 2014, was originally registered in 2004. It was used by his travel agency, he said. The vehicle is 20 years old now, stationary for eight years. “It is of no use to me anymore,” Ahmed said.
Asked why the facility did not return the car when there was an attempt to revive the facility, Chatterjee said the car could not be returned as the machines were not operational.
“We had a combination of hydraulic and electrical lifts inside the facility divided into four zones. When we tried to revive the system, the machines started showing problems as they were defunct for over two years. It became very difficult to revive them. That car (the Honda City) could not be lifted because of this. Why else would we keep a car like this?” Chatterjee asked.
Chatterjee recalled the owner of the Honda City. “I remember the owner. He was an old client and we had offered him a discount. But this car was in bad shape as far as my memory goes.”
Ahmed refuted the allegation of the car being in bad shape. He claimed that the car was “fully operational” and had been generating a “healthy monthly income” for his agency in 2016.
The CMC mayoral council member in charge of parking, Debasish Kumar, said he was not aware of any such car.
The CMC will revive the parking facility, he asserted. “Once the work starts, we will hand over the car to the police for a proper inquiry,” Kumar told this newspaper.