The body of an engineering student, who went missing on Thursday night after leaving a wedding reception in his neighbourhood, was recovered from a water body not far from his house in Narendrapur's Mahamayatala on Sunday morning.
Apratim Das went missing on Thursday night, according to a police complaint lodged by family members. The family wrote in the complaint that Apratim's phone became unreachable after he left the wedding venue on the night of February 1.
"The 23-year-old youth, a second-year electrical engineering student at a private college in Baruipur, had been incommunicado since Thursday night," an officer in the Baruipur police directorate said.
On Sunday afternoon, a body was found floating in a pond in Dhalipara, not far from the youth's home. "Residents of the area spotted the body and alerted the police. The body was later identified as Aparatim's," the officer said.
Several people in Apratim's neighbourhood accused the police of inaction. They alleged that the cops had not taken any effective steps to track down the youth.
The policemen who went to remove the body from the pond were allegedly heckled. A larger cop team reached the spot to pacify the mob.
An officer in the Baruipur police directorate said they had followed all the steps mentioned in the protocol.
"After the missing complaint was lodged with Narendrapur police station, we carried out an inquiry, circulated photographs of the victim among all adjacent police stations and also uploaded his details on the Bengal police's portal for missing persons," said the officer.
Apratim's father Suman Das told The Telegraph on Sunday: "My son had gone to a wedding reception. He received a text message after which he left the event abruptly around 11.34pm. Since then, his phone had been switched off. We tried looking for him everywhere but could not trace him."
An officer at the police station said the victim's phone had been switched off all through. "All our efforts to track down the youth using mobile phone signals had been in vain," the officer said.
"An unnatural death case has been registered. The exact cause of death would be clear only after we get the post-mortem report," the officer said.