Howrah to Bandel and back to Bally. That was the route gynaecologist Sushil Pal, attached to Serampore Walsh Hospital, had taken last Friday.

The call statement of Pal’s cellphone revealed that, after leaving his Bright Street residence, he had gone straight to an unknown destination in Bandel, and not to a private clinic, where he was to treat patients.

Sleuths of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probing the case came to know from Pal’s call statement that Bally was his last point of call.

“He spent more than four hours in Bally. Where he went from there is still unknown. The cellphone indicated that Pal was in Bally till 3.30 pm, when he received his last call. Bally was the place where Pal was either murdered or abducted from,” said an official at the CID’s Bhabani Bhavan headquarters.

Pal’s body was found off the Saraswati canal at Howrah’s Sankrail last Saturday morning, 24 hours after he left home. Investigators found a telephone booth owned by a woman in Bally from where a number of calls had been made to Pal’s cellphone.

Sleuths came to know from her about a person who had called up Pal. Subsequently, police interrogated the person at Bally police station for over five hours.

Police are trying to find out why Pal went to Bandel.

“He had no business in Bandel and knew no one there. According to his family, he had never been there,” said a CID officer, adding: “But the location of the tower that delivered an incoming call to Pal’s cellphone confirmed that he was in Bandel around 10.15 am.”

A team of CID officers checked all the nursing homes in Bandel to find out whether Pal had visited them last Friday.

“We showed the nursing home employees Pal’s photograph, but no one could identify him,” said police.

Detectives ruled out the possibility of Pal’s body being thrown into the Hooghly from Bally bridge.

“The bridge remains busy throughout the night because of the heavy movement of vehicles, specially trucks. It seems his body was either dumped into the canal or some place close to the canal,” said police.