Gayatri, the wife of missing businessman Anuj Kumar Verma, with son in Patna on Sunday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, July 31: Eleven days have elapsed since 10 people arrived at the Frazer Road workplace of Anuj Kumar Verma, a 36-year-old businessman, and asked him to accompany them. The trader never returned to his Raja Pul residence thereafter.

Anuj’s wife, Gayatri, has been knocking on the doors of various senior police officers ever since but the trader has remained untraceable. Accompanied by one of her children and some of her relatives, Gayatri was spotted sitting on a wooden bench outside the office of deputy superintendent of police (Town) Ramakant Prasad at the Patna police headquarters today. Last week too, she had approached Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Alok Kumar to help trace her husband.

But the police force, which is presently bogged down by the back-to-back killings in the state capital, is probably a bit too busy to lend an ear to the plight of the family. Even today, senior police officers remained closeted in the office of Patna deputy inspector-general of police Vineet Vinayak for hours together.

The Vermas, however, do not want to go into confrontation with the men in uniform, as they are their only hope.

“Kaam ho raha hai. (Work is being done). The police have been assuring us all the time and we have faith in them too. We know the police will recover my uncle soon,” said Rakesh, Anuj’s nephew.

The police headquarters have been buzzing with activities in the past week. From announcing cash rewards on criminals who killed Ravikant Choudhary on July 27 to placing officers of police stations under suspension or initiating departmental inquiries against them, senior officers are into an intensive image-correction exercise.

Last evening, the police announced a cash reward of Rs 50,000 for anyone who provides leads into the Ravikant murder case. The Patna SSP also suspended four cops of different police stations besides ordering departmental proceedings against 21 other personnel.

Ask some cops and they talk about the “pressure” element. “Halat abhi kharab hai. (It is a bad situation for us at present). Work starts at 9am or even early and we don’t know when it would end,” an officer said during a casual conversation at the police headquarters. All this for the sake of effective crime control, but Gayatri’s anxiety remains.