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Police are looking for a woman in her 40s after a man lodged a complaint alleging she had drugged and robbed his 77-year-old mother.
Santanu Basu and his wife Sriparna Dhar of Garia had hired the woman, Jolly Das, to look after their three-year-old daughter since both are working professionals.
On Saturday evening when Basu, a music composer, returned to his house on Raja SC Mullick Road near Garia around 9.30pm, he found his mother Basanti lying senseless on the bed beside a pile of clothes, an officer of Netaji Nagar police station said.
"My next-door neighbour alerted me that the ayah had left my daughter Devaanshi at her house and when she visited my house, she found the main door ajar and my mother lying on the bed," Basu said. "The ayah had left by then."
His wife, a gynaecologist, was at her workplace, a hospital in Alipore, at the time, the officer said.
He said the couple had in the past hired Das from a local ayah centre for a day.
She had left her cell phone number with the family asking them to call her back if they needed her.
The couple, who have had ayahs for their daughter since her birth, hired Das once again on Friday, the officer said. But this time, they did not involve the centre, he said.
In his complaint, Basu has said that a gold chain and a pair of gold earrings worn by his mother and Rs 15,000 were missing.
"I initially thought my mother might have lost consciousness because of some ailment. Later, I found that her ornaments and cash were missing.... We became suspicious of the ayah after Devaanshi told us that my mother fell asleep after sipping tea served by her,"Basu said.
The cup in which the tea had been served was clean when Basu returned home.
On Sunday morning, when Das did not report for duty and her cell phone was found to be switched off, his "suspicion was strengthened", Basu said.
He then lodged a complaint with Netaji Nagar police station.
The police found that Das's address on the centre's register was fake. Das had told the centre that she was from Raina in South 24-Parganas.
Police said it was apparent that neither the family nor the centre had verified her credentials before recruiting her.
Hundreds of working couples across the city hire help - either through centres or on their own - and leave their children and elderly parents in their custody.
This is not the first time such a person has cheated a family.
The officer said the woman's description and name had matched with a suspect in a similar case in the Patuli police station area.
"How could the police not arrest her after the first offence at Patuli?" asked Basu. "Had she been booked, she would not have got the opportunity to target another house. I shudder to think what might have happened if she had fled with my daughter."
An officer at the Lalbazar police headquarters said people must submit details of their help to local police stations so that cops can maintain a record of who is working where.
2 dead, 2 injured
Two people were killed and two injured in an explosion at a firecracker manufacturing unit in the Chingripota area of Budge Budge on Tuesday.
Police said gunpowder stored in a drum exploded and a fire broke out in the unit.
The dead have been identified as Mehboob Mallick, 55, the owner of the unit, and Sahanara Bibi, 51, a worker. The injured are being treated at MR Bangur Hospital.
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