Ghola residents point to the spot where the body was found. Picture by Soumen Bhattacharjee

“Ma chali gayee aur hum shaam ko loutenge (Mother has left and I will return home by evening).”

This was the last that Babita Gupta heard from husband Rakesh, when he called from the airport around 2.30pm on Sunday.

Sixteen hours after that call, Rakesh Gupta’s body was found inside a gunny bag beside a pond at Ghola, in Sodepur, on the northern fringes of the city. There were strangulation marks on the Teghoria resident’s neck, and his hands and legs had been tied with rope.

Why was the 40-year-old company secretary with the Shrachi group killed? His colleagues and police have no definite answers.

If Shrachi group officials blamed it either on “mistaken identity” or “some personal rivalry”, the police are probing the possibility of a land deal gone wrong.

“Being the company secretary of a real-estate firm, he must have been part of land deals being struck. One possibility is that he fell foul of some promoter-criminal. It may be a revenge killing,” said an investigating officer.

Adding a twist to the murder mystery is a blouse tied around the neck of the victim when the body was taken out of the gunny bag.

“The piece of clothing was apparently used to strangulate Gupta, which is rather unusual. Why use a blouse and where did the killers get it?” wondered an officer of Ghola police station.

The last definite fix on Rakesh’s location was provided by the call he made to wife Babita around 2.30pm from the airport, informing her that his mother had boarded the flight for Hyderabad and that he would come home late.

When Babita called him back after about 15 minutes, his mobile was switched off. Then all night long, whenever she tried calling, his mobile was “out of reach”.

“What could have happened in those 15 minutes? Was he being followed right from the time he set out from his house in a taxi to drop his mother to the airport?” asked an investigating officer. The police suspect Gupta was “abducted” around 2.45pm and whisked away in a vehicle.

“We are yet to ascertain where his assailants took him and why they dumped the body in Sodepur,” said an officer of Ghola police station.