LITTLE BIG GIRL: Satyiki Chakraborty reunited with mother Mithu on Monday evening. (Pradip Sanyal)

A six-year-old schoolgirl abducted by her pool car driver and locked up in a room with her mouth gagged and hands taped managed to wrench herself free and attract help even before a ransom call went to her family.

Satyiki Chakraborty, a student of Class I at Loreto House on Middleton Row, was rescued from a second-floor room at Falguni Market in FB Block of Salt Lake on Monday afternoon after the owner of a pet supplies shop and some vendors heard screams and looked up to see tiny hands frantically waving at them from a window.

According to Satyiki, pool car driver Bunty Singh had dropped her a few blocks away from her Salt Lake home at AJ 299 around 2pm and put her on a rickshaw that brought her to the market instead.

“Driver kaku (uncle) told me that something was wrong with the car and that the rickshaw would take me home. But the rickshaw-puller is a bad man. He slapped me, shoved a piece of cloth into my mouth and tied my hands before locking me up here,” she said, pointing to a face in the crowd around her.

The man at whom Satyiki pointed a finger turned out to be 19-year-old Kartik Mondal, Bunty’s roommate and his accomplice in the crime.

“The duo had abducted her for ransom. But this little girl was too smart for them,” said an officer at Bidhannagar South police station.

Satyiki is the daughter of college lecturer Sourav Chakraborty and wife Mithu, a homemaker.

Kartik was standing outside the market, which remains closed on Monday, when Satyiki’s screams reached pet supplies dealer Pankaj Banerjee and a veterinarian friend. “I had come to my shop to do the weekly cleaning when I heard a girl screaming and ran up the stairs with a few others. But we found the door locked. Someone then said that Kartik had a duplicate key as he stays in that room and we ran down again to get it from him. It didn’t occur to me immediately that he could be the culprit,” said Banerjee.

Witnesses said Kartik feigned ignorance about the girl being locked up in the room he shared with Bunty. But once Satyiki narrated how he had assaulted her, the crowd grabbed the youth and handed him over to a police patrol.

Around the same time, Satyiki’s worried family members and a team from Bidhannagar East police station were questioning Bunty about her whereabouts. The driver was taken there by his employer, who runs Ratula Travels, after Satyiki’s grandfather Mukul Chakraborty called him to say that the child hadn’t returned home from school.

“We had first called Bunty around 2.15pm but he didn’t pick up the phone. When he finally took the call, his answers to our questions were not convincing. He claimed to have dropped Satyiki in front of our gate but told the police later that she got off at the entrance to the lane. I can’t believe that we had been trusting him with our daughter for so long,” said mother Mithu.

Satyiki was reunited with her family at Bidhannagar South police station after rescuer Banerjee went to her house — she had correctly given her address as AJ 299 — to break the news.

“Satyiki has been travelling by pool car for around a year and Bunty has been driving her and nine other kids back from school in a Tata Sumo since January. I don’t think we will be able to put her in a pool car again,” said grandfather Mukul Chakraborty.

The six-year-old had left home at 6.30am on Monday in another pool car owned by the agency and was supposed to be back home in the vehicle driven by Bunty by 2pm. Her schoolmate Rachel, who stays in Block AD, was the last one to be dropped before her.

The Chakrabortys had gone to Rachel’s house to enquire about Satyiki before lodging a complaint with Bidhannagar East police station.

“We have arrested Bunty and his accomplice under Section 363 of the IPC (kidnapping for ransom). We will produce them in court on Tuesday,” said Debabrata Das, the additional superintendent of police, Bidhannagar.