Calcutta, April 22: A con artist has added policemen to his list of victims, walking out of custody in the heart of Calcutta while his minders were lost in paperwork.

Basant Fumra, an apparently English-speaking swindler who was arrested for duping a Camac Street jeweller out of Rs 15 lakh, slipped out of Shakespeare Sarani police station on Tuesday.

The 40-year-old Fumra was sitting outside the lock-up, waiting his turn to be questioned, when he pulled off the vanishing act.

Around 8.45pm, when Rajesh Subarno, the deputy commissioner of police (south), left the police station after his customary round, the cops realised Fumra had disappeared.

“On Sunday night, Fumra was arrested from a hotel in Gorky Terrace after we received a tip-off. He was produced in court the next day and had been in the lock-up since. Tonight, he was made to sit outside so that the investigating officer could grill him,” an officer said.

Fumra was wearing a red T-shirt. Almost all the officers were busy either meeting people or handling case diaries when the incident happened. The duty officer was taking down a complaint of a mobile phone theft. No one noticed that Fumra was sitting unguarded outside the lock-up.

“The DC had also interrogated him before leaving. We never thought he could walk away just like that,” another officer said.

The duty officer and the lock-up constable have been suspended. “An officer of the rank of additional commissioner has been asked to probe the role of the officer-in-charge. I have sought the report by Wednesday morning,” said commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti.

Fumra had walked into the jewellery shop on Camac Street and left with gold and diamond ornaments after telling the owner he had come on behalf of a trusted customer.

“Having toured different cities, he came back with the booty to sell it when we caught him,” an officer said.