Body of one of the missing ad executives fished out

The three men were driving down to Goa from Pune on Friday night and were supposed to drop Shrutika to Kolhapur on the way.

Incidentally,there is no barrier on the road where there the divider ends and the bridge begins. As a result,the road directly opens into the river,prompting the police to believe the car might have fallen into the river after jumping over the divider. There is a 15-foot gap (along the divider) and the car may have fallen into the river. We can reach a conclusion only after tracing the vehicle, said DCP Zone 1 Makarand Ranade.

The body was sent for postmortem and a team from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was called to carry out rescue operations. But before the NDRF team arrived with deep water divers and inflatable boats,the police had started a search with the help from locals. At least three deep water divers from NDRF immediately started searching the riverbed but could neither trace the vehicle nor any of the missing persons till late evening. While the search operation was primarily based on the theory that the vehicle might have fallen into the river after jumping over the road divider,there were no tyre marks,broken glass traces or any other cue that could point towards such an accident.

Police said Chintans mobile phone,bracelet,licence and wallet were intact,ruling out the possibility of a robbery.

The possibility of a foul play has also been ruled out by Ashita Sarkar,one of the founders of the advertising firm where the group worked. We are like a family. They were responsible people. The first time we got to know that the group is missing was on Saturday morning when Shrutikas father wrote an email to us saying his daughter has not yet reached home, she said.

Sahil is a native of Ujjain,while Chintan hails from Vadodara. None of the four are married.