Without answers, Ashish Dey’s family grieves in silence

It's been nearly a month since Ashish Dey, the owner of a luxury hotel and a shoe retail outlet, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle.

It’s been nearly a month since Ashish Dey, the owner of a luxury hotel and a shoe retail outlet, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle. In all this time, seven-year-old Sayan hasn’t smiled.

Shocked at his father’s sudden death, he sits quietly, refusing to talk or to go out and play. He also wants his mother, Dolon, constantly by his side. Family members say Sayan never asks them about his father, but sometimes he holds his photograph and quietly weeps.

It needn’t have been like this, says Dolon fighting back tears, if only the police had heeded their appeals that Dey’s life was under threat. Pointing at the three armed constables guarding their house now, a bitter Dolon says: “What is the use of these policemen now, when he has already gone?”

To compound their grief, the police have not been able to even establish the identities of the attackers. It was on November 2 that Ashish — the owner of Smita Hotel as well as a retail outlet of Sreeleather, a shoe company with a chain of shops in New Delhi, Kolkata and Ranchi, which recently inked an MoU with Greece’s Ginis Leather — was shot dead in Sakchi.

His family points out that Dey had been receiving ransom calls. First a local builder, Babul Ghosh, threatened him over a 1-acre plot costing more than Rs 1 crore. On February 2, he got a call from Nagaland demanding Rs 1.25 crore as ransom.

On May 18, another letter asked him to take a flight to Dimapur with Rs 50 lakh, with the rest of the amount to be collected in Jamshedpur. But Dey didn’t pay up.

Though Dey kept the police in the loop right from the beginning, the family says they didn’t take the threats seriously. Only an armed guard was stationed outside the house.

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While the police did round up a dozen odd known criminals of the city, including Ramesh Kacchap, Ravi Chowrasia, Javed Akhter, Shanker Munda and Jeetendra Singh alia Pappu Don, after the shootout, it has not been able to identify the two assailants. Chief Minister Madhu Koda recently admitted that Dey’s killers were still at large.

And Dey’s isn’t the only high-profile, unsolved murder case of Jharkhand.

The police are no closer to determining who killed Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Sanjay Tiwari (November 15), his party colleague Ajit Sahu (November 16) or the BJP’s Scheduled Tribe wing president Anand Kachhap (November 22).