Police on Wednesday evening started questioning Rajdoot Sharma, the driver of the car that crashed early on Monday, causing the death of event management professional Sutandra Chatterjee, who was allegedly chased across 33km by drunk men in an SUV on NH19.

However, the prime accused behind Sutandra’s death, Bablu Yadav, who was at the wheel of the SUV, remained untraced on Wednesday.

CCTV footage before the car crash revealed Sutandra’s Tiago following the white Creta at high speed along Rice Mill Road before swerving to the right and turning turtle.

After watching the CCTV footage released by the police about the crash moments before the crash, Sutandra’s mother, Tanushree Chatterjee, on Wednesday expressed concerns about the role of the driver of her daughter’s car, Rajdoot Sharma, who had earlier claimed that the SUV with drunk people had been chasing them.

“Now I can’t trust anyone. Why did the driver of Sutandra’s car change route and start chasing the other car at high speed? If he had not done so, my daughter’s life might have been saved,” Tanushree told reporters at her Chandernagore residence.

She added that her only demand now was that those responsible for her daughter’s death should be punished.

Sharma is being questioned to find out what prompted him to drive at reckless speed just before the crash. A separate team
also questioned one of Sharma’s friends, as well as Mintu Mondal, the complainant in the case who was also in the ill-fated Tiago.

However, officers said efforts to track Bablu based on the tower location of his mobile phone proved futile apparently because the gadget was switched off. Teams have fanned out to undisclosed locations in Jharkhand. Cops said they were trying to fix the identities of those who accompanied Bablu in his white Creta.

The Creta allegedly chased the blue Tiago that Sutandra rode with four others, including her driver Rajdoot Sharma, on her way to Gaya in Bihar from Chandernagore in Hooghly. She died after the Tiago hit a concrete wall off NH19 in Kanksa, nearly 153km from Calcutta, and turned turtle.

“We are working on multiple leads about Bablu’s whereabouts. It appears he fled from (hometown) Panagarh after realising the woman in the
car died in the car crash,” a senior officer of the Asansol-Duragpur police commissionerate said.

Son of a small-time scrap car dealer in Panagarh, Bablu picked up his family business — under the name Yadav Traders — a decade back and worked towards its exponential growth. Police said Bablu gradually veered towards scrapping old cars after sourcing them from the adjoining states. He was once arrested by a team from Budbud police station for allegedly illegally scrapping an old lorry, for which he is out on bail.

“By virtue of his business in car spare parts and suspension, Bablu has deep contacts with traders from the adjoining states of Jharkhand and Bihar. We are mapping some of them to find out more about his possible location,” the officer said.

Investigators on Wednesday began a parallel probe to find out why the group left behind the white Creta — WB40AT 1974 — and did not run away with it.

The crash that killed Sutandra left the four others inside the car unhurt. One
of the occupants of Sutandra’s car said he picked up the keys of the Creta after spotting it.

A senior CID officer, who is part of the probe, said that it would have been easier to track Bablu and the others had they been in the car on the run. As they left the car, they are now scattered.