An air force boat looking for the missing trio. (Below) Dhiraj Mehta and Ankit Gupta in Calcutta on Wednesday. Pictures by Swarup Mondal and Pradip Sanyal

Narayangarh (West Midnapore), June 18: Gautam Basu, Rajendra Lakhotia and Ramesh Khanuja were last seen huddled on the roof of a car around eight last night. All that could be traced till 6.30 this evening were what looked to a policeman like clothes hanging from a treetop.

Air force and police teams are trying to locate the three washed away with their over 2200kg Toyota Innova from National Highway 60 in West Midnapore last evening.

Basu, 50, the president of a Calcutta-based aluminium extrusion company, was returning to the city from Balasore with five business associates when the big car got stuck in the swirling waters of the Keleghai, which had swelled and flooded the highway.

Four of them — Dhiraj Mehta, Ankit Gupta, Arun Chakraborty and Gopal Yadav, the driver — held on to the guard rail along the highway and waded through the floodwaters to a bridge 150 metres away, where police rescued them.

In pitch darkness and pounding rain, Basu stayed back with Rajendra Lakhotia, 45, and Ramesh Khanuja, 58.

Yadav said when the car had reached the bridge around 7pm, the river was flowing just below it. “We thought we’d be able to get through the stretch but the water increased rapidly and I suddenly realised I couldn’t take the car forward.”

Khanuja did not know how to swim and was scared to walk in the water. “As he pleaded with us not to leave him, Gautam decided to stay back with Lakhotia,” said Mehta.

The three clambered up the five-foot-nine-inch Innova. “The car had by then been dragged to the guard rail, where it got stuck,” said Yadav.

Basu’s cousin Sumitava Mitra was in touch with him on the mobile from Calcutta last evening. “I called up police,” said Mitra, who today came to Paktapol, 180km from Calcutta, from where his cousin had said he was staring at death.

Mitra had also called Trinamul Congress leaders for help as Basu is a former aide to Mamata Banerjee.

West Midnapore superintendent of police R. Rajsekharan said 40 minutes were lost because they were told that the car was stuck near a bridge on the Subarnarekha, around 25km from Paktapole. “When police personnel reached, a crane brought to tow the car could not move because of the rising water. Then an attempt was made to rescue them with a rope. But by then the water had risen so much that the car was washed away,” he said.

The black Innova was located around 4am, stuck in a clump of trees near the highway.

“The water receded a little early in the morning and we began searching for the missing persons but we could not find them,” Rajsekharan said.

The rescue mission resumed at 3pm when a team of eight air force personnel arrived.

Around 6.30 this evening, the officer in charge of Belda police station called up Basu’s house near Lansdowne market to say he had spotted “some clothes” on a treetop. But there was no call after that.

“It’s a pity the way the administration went about with the rescue. Why wasn’t the army called in earlier?” asked Basu’s elder brother Amlan.

Lakhotia is the general manager (export) of the company for which Basu worked. Khanuja, 58, is its Delhi dealer.

Chakraborty, 31, is a representative of Tata BP Solar. Gupta, 26, and Mehta, 34, work for a home furnishing company.