Amit Das

Calcutta, April 9: Officers of the Burtola police station have been accused of asking a roadside eatery owner to arrange for a vehicle for them to go and recover his stolen motorcycle.

In the end, the trader traced the two-wheeler by himself.

The demand for transportation came after the policemen had refused to lodge a complaint for seven consecutive days. They registered the complaint after the trader, Amit Das, approached deputy commissioner (north) Pallab Kanti Ghosh, but still did not act on it.

Das, however, not only recovered the motorcycle on his own, but also lodged a complaint at the Lalbazar grievance cell that has resulted in a censure for Nirmal Kanti Ghosh, one of the officers at the police station.

A probe has also been ordered into the incident, said the deputy commissioner.

On January 23 this year, the trader, in his late 30s, had gone with a friend to a roadside shack in Gouribari, in north Calcutta, for a drink. When Das stepped out a couple of hours later, he could not find his motorcycle anywhere.

The two-wheeler had been purchased in May 2007 in his elder brother’s name because he as a central government employee qualified for a two-wheeler loan.

When Das went to the police station, the officer on duty allegedly accused him of faking the theft after selling off the motorcycle to pay for his drinks.

“The next day, I again went to the police station but the officers refused to listen to me. I pleaded with them to register a complaint so that I could claim the insurance money,” said Das.

For the next seven days, he did the rounds of the police station without any luck.

Left with no one to turn to, Das started looking for his vehicle on his own. Following the leads provided by residents of Gouribari and the Khanna cinema area, he traced the two-wheeler to Joynagar in South 24-Parganas and immediately informed the police station.

“I was asked to hire a car to take the officers there to recover the motorcycle. I even arranged for a car, but the officers made me wait from noon to 4pm on February 9 and then refused to go to Joynagar citing inclement weather,” said Das.

“Feling completely frustrated, I went to the house in Joynagar where the motorcycle was kept. With a spare key, a started the two-wheeler and rode it back to home,” Das added.

The trader was not willing to let the matter rest. He lodged a complaint with the grievance cell at Lalbazar. Based on it, Nirmal Kanti Ghosh was censured last month and a probe was started into the incident.

“There was some failure on the part of the police. We are finding out why such an incident happened,” said deputy commissioner Ghosh.