The discovery of the pregnant Sumanta hits home hard for Tom Hippe (62) from Amsterdam, who is part of the Veterans Search Team (VST) that searched for her body several times. Yet it also gives him a bit of peace, because the long search has come to an end with the tragic news. “Without a body you always keep a little hope. The book can finally close.”
After four years of uncertainty, there is a breakthrough in the case: the human remains that Tuesday at a business park in Hoorn were found are from Sumanta Bansi. That became announced yesterday by the Netherlands Forensic Institute.
The Veterans Search Team searched several places for Sumanta, but the location where Manodj B. led the investigation was never designated as a search area. “We’ve never been there, so at least we didn’t miss her. I would hate that. Somehow I’m ‘glad’ that she was not found in a place where we searched”, Tom responds.
“The area of the Robbenoordbos was not only inaccessible, but also terribly large”
The police organized several searches in the Robbenoord forest at Den Oever and in recreation park De Hulk at Horn. Tom was looking for three times to Sumanta.
Needle in a haystack
“These are intense searches, in which we depend on indications from the detectives. After such a long time, you look for soil disturbances. The Robbenoord forest site was not only inaccessible, but also terribly large.”
In addition, it was very cold and raining. “In those circumstances, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, and in the worst case scenario, you can overlook someone or miss a track.”
No trace
At the Hulk recreation park, the weather conditions were a lot more helpful, but that search also yielded no trace of Sumanta. “We would have preferred to have found her then,” he says, looking back on that day. “If you don’t find someone, it still feels unsatisfactory. You keep wondering where that person has gone. Is there a tragic ending or did someone take the plane to disappear from the radar after all?”
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The fact that her body was finally found hit the Veterans Search Team like a bomb: “We searched for her with many people and shared the message with each other via the group app. Everyone had mixed feelings. you: ‘yes!’, but of course it is also very sad for her parents that she is really gone.”
Two rainbows
And whether you believe in the afterlife or not; that yesterday afternoon not one, but two rainbows appeared — right above the site of Sumanta – can be called a magical miracle. “I thought for a moment: those two rainbows are a sign from above, from Sumanta and her baby. I’m not that religious, but I thought it was very special. Now they have finally been found and are back home.”
The case of Sumanta Bansi
The Amsterdam student Sumanta (22) disappeared in February 2018. Manodj B. was arrested in November 2020. In July of this year, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing and disposing of her body.
They would have had an affair and Sumanta was expecting him for the second time. Under pressure from Manodj B. and his family, she aborted the first pregnancy. But according to the judge, she had absolutely no intention of that with her second unborn child.
For years Manodj B. insisted that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Until last Tuesday, two months after his conviction: in an interrogation he confessed to the police where he hid her body. The appeal is scheduled for November.
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