Pratik Gupta’s mother at the front door of their flat. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

A youth whose family claimed he went missing on March 9 was found unconscious outside his SN Banerjee Road flat early on Wednesday.

Family members opened the apartment door around 5.30am responding to the doorbell and found Pratik Gupta, 20, lying outside.

They immediately alerted police — a missing diary was reportedly lodged on March 10 — and Pratik was taken to a nursing home, and from there to Lalbazar for questioning.

The Guptas, who run a grocery store on SN Banerjee Road, did not admit having paid a ransom to secure Pratik’s release. But a source said the youth’s father, Prem Sagar, had received a ransom call on March 22.

“As advised by the officers who were tracking the case, Prem Sagar did not tell his family about the call,” the source added. The police, too, were tightlipped about ransom.

The officers denied the family’s claim that the youth had been missing since March 9.

“Pratik went missing on March 19,” said Vishal Garg, the deputy commissioner of police (II), detective department. “He called up his father around 6.30am on Wednesday from Sealdah station and was brought back home. We had registered a missing case but later started a case of abduction. The probe is on.”

But if there was no ransom call, why was an abduction case started? Senior officers refused to clarify.

According to the family’s version, they had left for a relative’s home in Jharkhand on March 8, leaving Pratik behind to run the shop and his share-trading business.

“We were in touch with him till we boarded a train for Howrah at 4pm the next day. But we could not locate him when we returned home around 11.30pm. His motorcycle was lying unlocked. We waited for him the entire night and lodged a missing diary the next morning,” said Pratik’s elder sister, who did not want to be named.

“Scanning the call details of his cellphone, we suspect Pratik was in Titagarh on Tuesday. Some time after March 9, before he switched off his phone for a while, he was in Salt Lake,” said an officer.