Anup at the Falakata police station on Monday. (Anirban Choudhury)

Alipurduar, July 6: The six-year-old son of a Chopra businessman was rescued early this morning from the clutches of his kidnappers after a search that spread over two districts and more than 60 hours.

Members of Bison Club in Falakata chased the abductor’s car, but it almost overran two of them who tried to stop him by propping up their bikes on the route.

Srimanta Sarkar’s son Anup had been picked up by his employee Biswajit Biswas from school in Chopra on Saturday. Sarkar has a jewellery shop and a business in cable connections. Biswas had been working for him for the past eight months. When the boy could not be found and neither could Biswas, the family grew suspicious and filed an FIR against him.

Later at night, Biswas called up the family and asked for Rs 14 lakh as ransom.

The police tracked down Biswas’s position by tracking his calls. By Sunday evening, they were sure he was in Jalpaiguri district. By then Biswas’s friend Amar Das who had introduced him to Sarkar had been arrested and he disclosed how his bike had been used to carry away Anup. The school authorities had described Das’s bike to the police.

“We contacted our counterparts in Falakata and they did the rest. We rescued the boy but Biswas fled,” said Dilip Karmakar, the inspector in charge of Chopra police station.

The Falakata police had asked the local Bison Club to keep watch in the area. Biswas had asked Sarkar to meet him on a culvert in Falakata with the money. The family was ready with police escort in plainclothes. Smelling something amiss, Biswas, who came in a steel-coloured Maruti Omni, dropped Anup near the pre-arranged spot and sped away.

Members of Bison Club on motorcycles gave chase and tried to stop the car. At one point, the vehicle almost ran over Gopal Roy and Gobinda Das, who had blocked the route with their bikes. Both of them were injured and Roy was admitted to MJN Hospital in Cooch Behar in serious condition.

David Lepcha, the subdivisional police officer of Alipurduar, said: “The car fled but we are sure we will be able to identify it soon. The little of the number plate that we could read showed that it was a private vehicle from Siliguri.”

The car had gone towards Jaigaon near the Bhutan border.