Pinku Roy, a farmer dwelling in Mainaguri block of Jalpaiguri, was caught by surprise when he received a call from an unknown number on Tuesday morning.

"Have you lost your Aadhaar card and other documents?" the caller, a woman, asked.

Roy, busy searching for the identity documents of his family in the rubble as the mini-tornado had blown away his hutment on Sunday afternoon, took time to react.

"As I responded in the affirmative to the caller’s questions, she told me that she had found my son’s Aadhaar card in an agriculture field in front of her house. It was then I learnt that her village is 11km from my village,” said Roy, a resident of Sardarpara village, affected by the storm.

On Sunday, Roy — who along with farming, provides utensils, ovens and furniture on rent to make additional earnings — was with his wife Sarathi and their 16-year-old son Sahil, a Class IX student.

"Suddenly, the storm hit us. Its intensity was such that we were almost blown away. The three of us somehow saved ourselves by embracing the concrete pillars of my hutment. After the storm passed away, only the pillars stood in their places. Most of our belongings, including the utensils I rent out, were missing. We also lost all our documents," said the 46-year-old.

The family, like many others in the village, lived in a hutment made with concrete pillars, bamboo mesh and a tinned roof.

On Tuesday, Roy got a call from Suniti Barman, who lives in Bhotpatti, a village in the same block located 11km away.

"She found my son’s Aadhaar card in a field. As my contact number was printed on it, she called me up. She told me that she had found the same number written on a couple of utensils that were also found there. It seems the storm had carried with it some of those utensils to that village," the farmer said.

Later in the day, Barman sent an acquaintance to Sardarpara to hand over Sahil’s Aadhaar card to Roy.

It's not just Roy whose heavy utensils were sucked into the storm and deposited in far-off places.

"I had an iron trunk at home in which I had Rs 40,000 savings in cash. That too was blown away. This substantiates the storm's intensity," said Sarobala Roy, who is from Sishuabari village of Mainaguri.

Sources in the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said a team of two experts had reached Mainaguri from Calcutta to conduct a survey and ascertain the impact of the storm.

G.N. Raha, who is posted at the IMD office in Gangtok, said the information they had gathered so far and the extent of damage showed that it was a mini-tornado with a speed of around 60km an hour.

"It had the character of developing one or more suction vortices that drew items from the ground to the air. It is because of those that various items were sucked in and later those floated in the air and then landed at other places. The same happened with the Aadhaar card. Since it's a lighter item, it floated farther and reached the village 11km away," said Raha.