Ganguly left his residence in New Road in South Calcutta for his daily morning walk and an alert was sounded after an hour at 6 am when he did not return. Till late in the evening, the police could not decide whether to register the case as one of abduction or disappearance. The family has not yet received any ransom demand though all incoming phone calls to the residence are being intercepted..

Mr Ganguly has been serving Exide, a Raheja company and the biggest battery makers of the country, since 1986. The family members are refusing to talk openly about the possibilities of an abduction while the police has said that it was too farfetched to imagine that he had been abducted without any other passerby or fellow morningwalker getting wind of the incident during those early hours.

His wife, Bharati, who was in Jaipur at her parents’ place, has rushed back here from Delhi. His sons, Souymabrata and Jayabrata, are in the US while his daughter, Sucharita, stays near his residence after marriage.

The police is absolutely tightlipped but one company official, obviously acting on instructions from above, said,``He has gone to Delhi to attend a yoga camp.’’ Such was the level of confusion in official as well as police circles. One of those who was his companion during the routine morning walk said,``All of us were a little surprised when he did not turn up at the Alipore Horticultural Gardens in the morning during the usual time of 5 am.’’ Mr Ganguly stayed a stone’s throw away in a company flat on New Road and used to leave his home at 5 am for the walk, a routine from which he did not deviate on Friday. That he did not reach the scheduled destination was the only clue that the police is working on at the moment. Entry to the Horticulture Gardens is restricted only to members.

Mr Ganguly had been staying in this residence for the last four years and had lately had only his servant for company since his wife’s departure for Jaipur. Sources said that it was the servant who informed Sucharita over phone that Mr Ganguly had not returned even after one-and-a-half hours. Sucharita immediately rushed to the New Road residence alongwith her husband and started making phone calls to hospitals, relatives and friends. The local Alipore police station was also informed. She also called her uncle, Mr Subrata Ganguly, the chairman of Webel. The chief minister, Mr Jyoti Basu, as well as the police minister, Mr Buddhadev Bhattacharya, were told about the disappearance immediately.