Durgapur, Aug. 10: A doctor has told police he woke up beside railway tracks in Dhanbad hours after he smoked a cigarette offered by a “familiar” youth 200km away in Durgapur.

The 45-year-old doctor, Supriyo Bhaduri, had disappeared yesterday morning from Durgapur station and returned today – his watch and Rs 25 missing but his wallet and his cellphone still in place.

Bhaduri said the youth had approached him outside the station around 10am. “I knew the youth who offered me the cigarette though I can’t recall his name. He came to me with a patient a few days ago. I am a smoker and so I took the cigarette when he offered. But after a few puffs I blacked out,” said Bhaduri, who runs a nursing home near the Durgapur station.

When he woke up around 11 last night, the doctor said, he found himself lying beside rail tracks near Mugma station in Dhanbad, about 200km from Durgapur.

Bhaduri took a train to Asansol and informed the government railway police who alerted Coke Oven police station in Durgapur where he stays. The police took him home around 2.30am and have started a probe.

Bhaduri had gone to the station to find out about train timings when he met the youth. “When I woke up beside the rail tracks, the back of my head was aching as was my left shoulder. My wrist watch and Rs 25 that I had kept in my shirt pocket had been taken away,” he said. “But I also had Rs 650 in my wallet and a cellphone. Those were there, but the phone was switched off,” Bhaduri said.

Asked whether he suspected anyone, Bhaduri said three persons were on his mind but did not name them. Bhaduri called his family from Mugma. They had lodged a missing diary at the police station by then.

“We have started a probe. Nothing can be said now,” said D.S. Rudra, additional superintendent of police, Durgapur.