Pune: Search for Gautam Pashankar on; kin hands over note to cops

PUNE: City police commissioner Amitabh Gupta on Friday told TOI that the family members of missing businessman Gautam Pashankar have handed over a note to the police, purportedly written by him, which stated that he was ending his life.
However, Gupta avoided getting into the specifics of the note. The city police continued their search for the businessman, who went missing on Wednesday evening.
Deputy commissioner of police (zone 1) Priyanka Narnavare told TOI, “In our investigations so far, we have not come across any aspect which indicates that it could be a case of kidnapping.The family has not received any ransom calls. The family members said he had no financial constraints nor was he under any kind of depression.”
“Pashankar went away on his own. We have formed four police teams to trace him and are conducting technical investigations. We are trying our level best to find him and we want him to return safely,” she added.
Senior inspector Balasaheb Kopnar of the Shivajinagar police station refused to divulge details about the progress of the investigations into the missing complaint lodged by Pashankar’s son Kapil on Thursday.
The 65-year-old Pashankar, head of the Pashankar Group, had gone to his fuel station on Solapur road on Wednesday afternoon before returning to his Shivajinagar office. He left the office around 4.30pm.
A police official requesting anonymity said, “A CCTV camera has captured images of Pashankar outside Modi Baug (his residence) near Central Mall at Shivajinagar after he left his office on Wednesday evening. He kept his mobile phone at home and walked away. We don’t know in which direction he went because the place around does not have CCTV surveillance. He has not called his family members.”
Speaking to TOI, Pashankar’s son Kapil made an impassioned plea for his father’s return. “Dad, we want you back. You know we have been through far worse. We have almost got out of it. Even if you think there is something, we will come out of it,” he said.
Kapil said his father had started out with a poultry business in the early 1980s before buying fuel stations and getting into the real estate business. “Getting into the automobile dealership business was my decision. We were expanding till General Motors got caught in the emissions scandal and sales plummeted for its flagship Tavera brand,” he said.
“We believed that GM being a big company would work out a solution. However, that did not happen and they wound up their business in India. We suffered huge losses but at the same time I was selling 100 cars of Audi (a new dealership) in a month. That dealership was doing well and we expanded to Nashik and other places. However, even that got caught in trouble because of the Volkswagen emissions scandal (VW owns Audi),” Kapil said.
It was then that the Pashankars decided to wind up the car dealership business. “With the proceeds, we paid back over Rs 250 crore in bank loans. The repayment of all debts took five years but were paid off in full last year. I have the no-dues certificate on each of those loans and we could not have done that without consulting dad,” Kapil said.
Kapil said the family has been through a lot even by way of medical crises. “The current predicament is nothing to the mountain of challenges we have surpassed together. We are looking at a fresh start. Our residual debt is only Rs 7 crore which we took for the real estate business. But even there our asset cover is much more. There is no reason for dad to feel dejected. He has to come back. We want him back,” he said.