LONG WAIT: Shyamal Kumar Dhar with wife Sandhya at their residence (top); Sushmita Dhar (above)

Nine years is a cruel period to live in hope of seeing someone again — especially when that someone is your own daughter. And on the faces of the family of Sushmita Dhar, the strain shows. If Sushmita is alive anywhere in the world today, they say, she will be 31. When she disappeared from their lives, the young college-goer was 22.

What has made the waiting especially harrowing for the retired banker, his wife and older daughter is that they have not received the support of friends, not even those who were the last to see their daughter alive in May 1995. Instead, they have been met with a cold indifference, hostile silence or at best contradictory statements which have been their lot for nearly a decade.

May 16, 1995. That’s the day that changed the lives of the Dhars who had moved into Plot no. 123, their three-storey residence on Putiari Banerjee Para Road in Calcutta only the year before that. “Sushmita was a very reserved person, not quite given to mixing. She had never stayed away from home and was reluctant to go to Chandipur with her friends,” recalls Arpita Dutta, Sushmita’s elder sister. “But finally she gave in to her friends’ demands and went off on the morning of May 13,” she adds.

“On the 16th, we were busy since morning, anxiously waiting for Bublai (Sushmita’s pet name) to return. We didn’t know exactly which train she was taking, but when it was close to five in the evening we started getting worried,” says mother Sandhya.

It was around that time that the mother and the sister, waiting on the first-floor balcony, spotted an elderly man in their lane asking around for the residence of Shyamal Kumar Dhar. “It was Bublai’s friend’s father,” says Arpita. “My heart started sinking as I ran downstairs to let him in,” she adds, “though there was yet no reason for me to feel that way. But I guess it was a hunch that something had gone terribly wrong.”

The unexpected visitor that evening was the father of Suparna Banerjee, a close friend of Sushmita who had also accompanied her to Chandipur. The Dhars, however, were not told immediately that Sushmita had gone missing from the hotel where the friends were staying. “He just said that one of us had to go to Chandipur immediately as the whole group had been detained by the police. So, my mother went off with the parents of the other friends in a Tata Sumo,” narrates Arpita.

The truth emerged only as Sandhya reached Chandipur the next morning. “We were first taken to the hotel. And there I saw all her friends — Suparna, Soma, Anindita, Rajib and Debanjan — standing in a line at the reception. From their body language I knew that something awful had happened, and that too, to my daughter.”

“Sushmita is missing,” is all that she was told. She waited all day at the gates of the hotel for the 22-year-old to return. And while she did, her daughter’s friends feasted on chicken pakoras and watched music channels on TV. That, apparently, was what Sushmita’s friends did on the morning of that fateful day. What especially saddens the Dhars is the lack of care or cooperation from people they thought were well-wishers. “Soma and Suparna were Bublai’s bosom pals. They were so close that someone wrote an article about them — ‘The Three S-es’ — in the college magazine. Yet these friends — as also the others — did not do anything to help the police in their investigation,” says an angry Arpita.

The Dhars have resorted to every measure to trace Sushmita. “The gist of my appeal to all her friends is, just tell us what happened,” says her father Shyamal. “But they have been very cold. Sometimes I wonder, are these the same people who often came to our house when they were studying with my daughter?” Unhappy with the official report on Sushmita’s disappearance, the Dhars decided to do their bit. That took them to the doorstep of veteran politician Ajit Panja, who suggested that they take the help of a private investigation agency.

It was this idea that brought forth a new dimension to the mystery. It emerged that Suparna’s father had engaged the same agency that Shyamal approached (although it is not clear why) to unravel the mystery. “We were shocked again. The agency said that they had already looked into this case and had found a blood-splattered nightdress in the hotel. From their photographs, we recognised the dress as Bublai’s. [Since then, the nightdress has been returned, again for reasons not certain, to the hotel authorities.] Now, why did Suparna and her family suppress these facts? It might have helped the police in the probe,” complains Arpita.

“Their conduct is highly suspicious,” says the Dhar’s lawyer Biman Banerjee, advocate, Alipore Court, Calcutta. The accused (Suparna Banerjee, Rajib Chowdhury and Debanjan Das — three of those who made the trip to Chandipur and against whom Sushmita’s father has filed a report) are fighting tooth and nail against the investigation. Why?”

While the case is still being heard at Alipore court (the bail petition of Suparna, Rajib and Debanjan was rejected on Friday last), Sushmita’s family is trying to put together the pieces of their lives. The adhesive of course is their yearning for Bublai, their “loving and sensitive” daughter and sister.