In Haldia flat, doors have signs of forced entry

Abduction Neighbours, guard all recount Saturday night horror but police seem not convinced

Flat number B / 2nd at Sankini Apartment where Bhusan Patil, a technical officer of the AGB-LDA led Haldia Bulk Terminals (HBT) lives bore telltale signs of forcible entry into the flat. The door seems to be damaged with heavy instruments. This is the flat where masked men had allegedly raided several times past Saturday midnight and finally "abducted" Patil, his wife and one-year-old daughter. Two other officers — Captain Manpreet Jolly and Jagadish Behara — who had come to his rescue were also allegedly abducted from here.

All the abducted men were released in the wee hours of Sunday after spending nearly five hours in detention. Soon they left Haldia and some have taken shelter at some undisclosed destination in Visakhapatnam. They were told by the abductors not to set their foot in Haldia again.

On Tuesday, all the three flats rented by the HBT officers were found locked. Even the Haldia City Centre office of HBT — the private cargo handling company, which is at loggerhead with the Trinamool Congress-backed labour union — was found locked.

A senior company official on condition of anonymity said out of 350 HBT staff members, about 150 are officers and live in and around Haldia. Most of them have now stopped reporting to the office. The rest 200 are labourers who are on the payroll of the HBT, and they now fear losing their jobs if the company close down.

To buttress their claim, HBT officials produced a series of text messages they received about a series of raids carried out by masked armed men at the flat of Bhusan Patil and asking for police help. But no help was provided, the company officials alleged.

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