Noted Tura teacher abducted at gunpoint

Tura: Gaganendra Sanyal, a retired teacher of Don Bosco School who worked tirelessly to get thousands of young girls and boys involved in the Scouts and Guides programme and was helping out in a school for orphans, has been abducted at gunpoint from Jekabari, near Garobadha, on Saturday night.
Four armed locals came in a car to the farm house where Gaganendra Sanyal, fondly known as Sir Sanyal by his past pupils, was staying.
The four armed men forcibly entered the house, at approximately 8:40 pm, and took the aged teacher away despite appeals by his wife and other inmates of the house to spare him.
“They came in fast and took him away before anyone could stop them. It was over in a matter of minutes,” said a witness from the house.
He added that all the men were locals.
The abduction of the teacher has spread shock and fear among the teaching fraternity.
Sanyal had been a teacher at Tura Don Bosco School for well over 35 years beginning his career in the early 1970s. He was the architect of the annual sports events in the school and as a   teacher was a formidable disciplinarian.
Many of today’s officers, leaders, businessmen and sportspersons from Garo Hills have been his students.
He spread the Scouts and Guides movement to hundreds of schools in Garo Hills and was acknowledged for his dedication with a President and Governor’s awards.
His missionary zeal led him to the Ram Krishna Mission at Jekabari, post his retirement from Don Bosco School.
Despite suffering from a debilitating nerve disorder which hampers his walking, Master Sanyal had been teaching the orphans of the school for the past three years.