LIC to look into missing poet case

Jan. 4: Life Insurance Corporation of India is likely to respond to the plea by the family of its one-time employee poet Abani Chakraborty, who went missing a decade ago.

The Chakraborty family had supplicated the insurance giant to clear his dues and employ the poet?s son on compassionate ground. ?We have to first examine the details of Chakraborty?s disappearance before committing anything,? Dhrubananda Das, LIC senior divisional manager, said before leaving for Mumbai this afternoon.

Sources said any decision on the matter could be taken only after Das returns on Monday.

?Since most of the people who were associated with Chakraborty are gone, it will take some time for things to move,? a mid-level official said. The official said the entire staff sympathised with the travails of the poet?s family. ?But everything depends on how the authorities view the case,? he added.

Chakraborty?s family comprises his wife Gayatri, son Ritwik and daughter Aditi. None of the family members have a permanent job. Ritwik serves as a temporary teacher in a Doyang school while Aditi is married.

Yesterday, during the poet?s 62nd birthday celebrations his family members and friends once again appealed to the LIC to look into the case and clear all his dues.

?My husband has been serving LIC since 1962. At the time of his disappearance he was an assistant DP. We immediately informed his employers about the disappearance,? said Gaytri. ?The LIC promised to pay back all his dues within seven years. But a decade has gone by and we are still have not got anything. We cannot even take any legal action since the promises were merely verbal and not supported by any written documents on the part of the department.?

?One can easily imagine the hardships we have to face without any earning member in the family and no support forthcoming from the LIC. Earlier, too, a group of my husband?s admirers in the literary circle and I had appealed to the LIC to absorb our son on compassionate ground, but nothing happened.?

Chakraborty left home for a stroll on November 12, 1994 never to return. The very next day the family lodged an FIR with the Latasil police but his whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery.