The week-long suspense over the missing IIC of Jhadapokharia police station in Mayurbhanj district Pradip Kumar Patnaik came to an end on Tuesday evening after the office of the district Superintendent of Police received his resignation letter through fax and e-mail.
Patnaik, in his letter addressed to SP Anup Krishna, has cited family disturbance as the cause of his resignation from the service.“I have not been abducted. I am resigning from the service due to family disturbances,” the letter stated.Though Patnaik’s wife Alibha had not come to the media about the missing of her husband, she had told the SP that he might have left for an unknown destination due to problems in the family.
However, the whereabouts of the missing police officer are not yet known. But police have come to know that he had withdrawn Rs5,000 in cash from an ATM counter at Patana in Keonjhar district on June 9 and later from an ATM counter at Ramabhadrampur in Vizianagaram of Andhra Pradesh on June 13.
Patnaik left Jhadapokharia by his Honda CBZ bike at about 10 am on June 9 after switching off his mobile phone. Since Jhadapokharia is on the border of Jharkhand, it was initially suspected that he might have been abducted by Maoists.