Bidhannagar police did not realise that the two boys who they thought had been kidnapped were murdered and lying dead in a morgue in an adjoining police district.
The families of Atanu Dey and Abhishek Naskar, both 16, had lodged a complaint on August 23 but the police allegedly could not make any headway till September 5.
The cousins’ families alleged that the police had refused to register a complaint when they approached Baguiati police station on August 22, the day the boys went missing.
Biswanath Dey, Atanu’s father, said the officer on duty refused to register a complaint and told them the teenagers “had possibly run away and would return in a day”.
“After we narrated the entire incident to the cops, they told us that Atanu had possibly fallen short of cash (needed to buy the bike) and was doing this to pressure us to give him more money. They refused to even register a missing person complaint and told us that the boys would return of their own accord,” said Biswanath.
According to Biswanath and Abhishek’s cousin Dibyendu, an FIR was finally registered on August 24 after family members showed officers at Baguiati police station messages demanding ransom for the boys’ release.
The alleged kidnappers made calls and sent text messages to multiple family members but the police still could not trace them.
Experts say electronic evidence is known to provide the precise location of a suspect. The way the Bidhannagar police handled the case has raised many questions.
Such was the impunity with which the accused worked that a family member of one of the murdered boys received a text message on Tuesday afternoon, which threatened that Atanu would be killed on Wednesday and that the family could claim the body on Thursday.
The message came at 3.12pm, long after the bodies were identified.
“They are not scared of the police,” said one family member.
The deputy commissioner (detective department) of the Bidhannagar commissionerate, Biswajit Ghosh, said they had followed all the standard operating procedures.
“The missing person’s report was circulated across all the adjoining districts as per the SOP,” he said.
Then why were the bodies not identified on time? The superintendent of Basirhat police, Joby Thomas K., told The Telegraph that at times it was difficult to match photographs of a person with the body as it undergoes deformation and decomposition.
“After we recovered the bodies, they were sent for post-mortem. We started an unnatural death case. We received the report only today. But before we could start any specific case, the bodies were identified and the matter was handed to the Baguiati police. We have followed all the protocol,” Thomas said.
Asked why the Bidhannagar police could not track down the kidnappers who were in constant touch with the victims’ families, Ghosh said the kidnappers wereusing multiple SIM cards andchanging phone sets, making it difficult to trace them.
“We wanted to ensure the safe return of the two boys.... Only yesterday we learned they had been killed,” Ghosh said.