Mumbai: Dad waits months for dead son's personal possessions

The pivotal scene in Mahesh Bhatts 1984 tearjerker Saraansh with debutant Anupam Kher haggling with Customs officials to release his deceased sons ashes won him the Filmfare Best Actorthat yearAlok Chatterjee 68 has even written to Mumbai commissioner Rakesh Maria for help PicNimesh DaveFor Alok Chatterjee 68 there sits no reward The retired traffic controller with Mumbai Airport has spent the last three months racing between a hospital and police station to claim the belongings of his only son Captain Soumik Chatterjee The 28yearold pilot with Jet Airways was killed in a road accident on Western Express Highway in April this yearChatterjee who now works with a private aviation firm as consultant says Neither officials at Andheri police station nor Cooper Hospital have offered me clarity about where my sons uniform metal wings wrist watch shoes socks and neck tie are Thats all I have as far as his last memory goesChatterjee has written letters seeking help to senior inspector at Andheri police station Nandakumar Dhumal additional commissioner of police West Region Chhering Dorje Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria superintendent of Cooper Hospital and Swadheen Kshatriya chief secretary of MaharashtraFinally I received a reply in July from the Andheri police stating that no possessions were on my sons body when they received it Meanwhile hospital authorities say they had handed over the belongings to the police After repeated visits I have been made to wait I have been spoken to rudely and now I have little idea of what to do next says a baffled ChatterjeeAccording to him he had inquired with the staff at Cooper Hospital where his son was brought in the day of the accident They promised to locate and hand the possessions over but never did My nephew even met Coopers dean Dr Ramesh Chaturvedi They took down my number and promised to callOn April 5 2015 captain Soumik Chatterjee a resident of Andheri East was on his way to the airport in a cab provided by his employer Jet Airways The accident occurred at 530 am when the cab slammed into a divider before the Andheri flyover on Western Express Highway Chatterjee who was seated on the rear seat died due to brain haemorrage He had left his home at 515 am to report for a 615 am MumbaiBengaluruMumbai flightHis father recollects I received a call from Jet Airways at 645 am to say that Soumik had met with an accident and had been taken to Andheris Cooper Hospital I left home and got there by 730 am I was told my son was declared dead before admissionThe hospital gave him a list of four items mdash an ID card pen ring and bracelet mdash that the pilot was carrying in a bag in the cab and asked Chatterjee to collect them from the police I did that but there was no sign of the belongings that were on his personthat dayThe driver Kamlesh Kahar revealed during investigations that he wasnt speeding but because an Innova suddenly overtook him from the left he had no option but to steer towards the right and missed the divider The bleeding pilot was rushed to Cooper Doctors said his head had smashed against a metallic object leading to his death Kahar who sustained minor injuries was arrested by the Andheri police and booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murderWe shifted to Mumbai from Kolkata when Soumik was five He was bright and hardworking a student of Bombay Scottish School in Powai He was supposed to get married the year he passed away says Chatterjee Investigating officer at Andheri police station Vikas Kadam said After we got custody of the body we conducted a panchnamaAfter that I left for the investigation My staff was present there though Later I learnt that his belongings had been misplaced We are conducting an enquiry into the issue We suspect that the hospitals ward boy may have disposed the belongingsTurning the blame on the police Cooper Hospital dean Ramesh Chaturvedi said Its the duty of the police to take care of a deceaseds belongings There are no lockers in the hospital to keep possessionsAn official spokesperson of the hospital however claimed that they had received a letter from Chatterjee and the search is going onHe explained that when an accident victim is brought to a hospital and if she is declared dead before admission the staff informs the local police The police takes custody of the body and does the panchnama The body is then sent for a postmortem to ascertain the cause of death So the belongings would have been lost at casualty by the police or at the postmortem centre he said