The body of a general manager of SAIL-run Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP), who had been missing while on duty since Saturday morning, was found under a lift inside the plant on early Sunday.

Police said Samit Bhattachariya, 54, GM (operations) at DSP's material handling plant of had gone to his workplace on Saturday morning as usual. His phone was unreachable since 11am on Saturday. Sources in the plant said people saw Bhattachariya joining work in the morning but later nobody saw him.

His family members lodged a missing diary with the police on Saturday night after Bhattachariya didn't return home and his phone was found switched off.

His car was found as usual at the parking lot of the plant and his bag and lunchbox, with its contents untouched, was found in his chamber.

An official of the plant on a night shift routine inspection saw his body under a lift at 3am on Sunday.

The plant authority immediately contacted the police. The body was sent for postmortem.

Police brought sniffer dogs for investigation but could not trace anything yet.

Trade union leaders at the plant said the lift developed technical snags and they had been complaining about it to the management but nothing was done.

"The lift was not working properly and we raised the issue with the management. However, it is not clear how the GM was found dead under the lift. This is very surprising," said Debesh Chakraborty, an Intuc leader.

Police said the probe is on and a post-mortem report is awaited. His call details have been collected.