A 15-year-old girl has gone missing on her way to school from her Posta home. A neighbour she liked is also missing.

Last week, 23-year-old Rimita Naskar had disappeared on her way to college in Salt Lake. A close friend of hers is in custody over the incident.

Neha Gupta, a Class IX student, had left home on Friday morning for Marwari Balika Vidyalaya but did not turn up there. She is the eldest of three daughters of an office clerk.

When Neha did not return home by 5.30pm, her father Ajay started looking for her. He lodged a missing diary at Posta police station on Saturday.

“The Guptas do not have a complaint against anyone in particular,” said a senior officer of the police station.

The girl had taken only Rs 2 from her mother before leaving for school around 10.30am.

“According to neighbours, Neha liked a distant relative named Raja Gupta, who stayed near their house. Raja, too, is missing,” said an investigator.

In his early 30s, Raja worked for a stone-slab shop in Burrabazar. A few days ago, he had borrowed Rs 2,000 from the owner of the shop and has not turned up there since. His mobile phone, too, is switched off.

In the other case, several raids were conducted in south Calcutta, but to no avail. Rimita’s friend Tapan Das Adhikari, who is now in custody, claimed during interrogation that she was hiding from her parents. He ruled out the possibility of the girl being kidnapped.

Rimita’s parents, however, maintain that Tapan and his friends had kidnapped their daughter.

“Tapan definitely knows where she is. It is possible that Rimita left home on her own, but I’m sure she wants to come back now and he and his friends are not allowing her to,” said Rimita’s father Shankar.

The police have found that three friends of Tapan — Palash, Shanker and Soumitra — knew Rimita. “We are trying to trace the youths. One of them is absconding,” said an investigator.