It took 42 minutes and Rs 750 for Vishnu Sharma — the suspected killer of businessman Shanti Lal Baid — to travel from near the Kolkata end of the Howrah bridge to the railway station on Monday, police sources said.
Reason: He allegedly took a detour to the Victoria Memorial to collect a ransom of Rs 25 lakh from Baid’s family before fleeing Bengal.
By then, the police suspect Sharma had killed Baid at a guesthouse on Sambhunath Pandit Street, around a kilometre from the businessman’s house on Lee Road in south-central Kolkata.
Sharma could not be arrested till late on Wednesday.
Baid, who ran a jewellery store in Burrabazar, had last left home around 6.40pm on Monday. The family received the first ransom call around 7.05pm.
Police sources said Sharma — documents that cops have got hold of reveal that he is from Delhi - had told taxi driver Ravinder Singh, who ferried him from near the Howrah bridge to the station via the Victoria Memorial, that he had a train to catch from platform 22 at 10.40pm.
Usually, the Howrah-Puri Express leaves from platform 22 at 10.40pm.
The police, however, suspect Sharma did not board the train for Puri. “He said so to the driver to mislead the police,” said an officer.
The officer said Sharma boarded the taxi from near the Howrah bridge and went to the Exide crossing via Mayo Road and the Park Street-JL Nehru Road crossing. From there he went to Queensway and finally to the south gate of the Victoria Memorial.
“We came to know about the route from the taxi driver,” the officer said.
Sharma hired the yellow taxi at 9.50pm and headed for the Exide crossing first, where the money was initially meant to change hands. He had purportedly told the driver that his brother was coming to hand over a bag, which he had forgotten to take with him.
On reaching the crossing, he had stationed the taxi near the Haldiram outlet. However, Baid’s family members then changed the meeting point and asked him to collect the money from in front of the Victoria Memorial, the police said.
The taxi then went past Birla Planetarium to reach the Victoria Memorial’s gate on Queensway. But Sharma could not see anyone there and called up Baid’s nephew and started abusing him.
“Hospital ke saamne waale gate pe hain (we are at the gate in front of SSKM Hospital),” an officer quoted the nephew as having told Sharma. The south gate of the Memorial is in front of SSKM.
Sharma, who was wearing a black jacket and a pair of jeans, had his face covered with a mask. He asked the nephew to throw the bag containing the cash inside the taxi when it slowed in front of the south gate.
Once he got the bag, he told the driver to speed up. “Uncle ji jahaaj bana dijiye (dear uncle, turn the car into an aeroplane),” the officer quoted Sharma as having told the driver.
It was 10.32pm when the taxi crossed the Howrah bridge but then it got stuck at a signal. Sharma paid the driver Rs 750 and got off.