A 62-year-old woman died after suffering a severe injury on her forehead at her home in Nagerbazar in northeast Kolkata on Sunday afternoon.
Moon Moon Pal’s neighbours said they heard her screams and then found her lying in a pool of blood in the garage of their house in Mordecai Lane.
Relatives said one gardener was working in the house when the incident happened. Police said they were searching for the man.
Neighbours gave first-aid to Pal, who was bleeding profusely, before taking her to a private hospital near the Nagerbazar intersection. Doctors in the emergency department of the hospital failed to revive her.
“The patient had passed out when she was brought in. She had lost a lot of blood from a head injury and we failed to revive her. She suffered a deep gash on her forehead,” a doctor who had examined her at the hospital said.
Sheema Pal, a relative who lives in the same locality as Pal, said the victim always wore two gold bangles. Both were missing when neighbours saw her critically injured.
Sheema said Pal and her husband, a retired government employee, lived by themselves. Their daughters live outside the city.
“They had hired a gardener to clean the house and tend to some flower plants. We strongly suspect this man was involved in the incident and have told officers at Nagerbazar police station about this,” Sheema said.
An officer in the Barrackpore commissionerate said they had started a case of unnatural death. The body has been sent to the Sagore Dutta Medical College and Hospital in Kamarhati for autopsy.
“The post-mortem report will help us ascertain the cause of the death. We are probing the case from every angle. The family members have named a man who was hired a few days back to clean the house. They have also told us her two gold bangles are missing,” the officer said.
According to the officer, multiple teams have visited the house and cops are trying to source CCTV footage from any camera around the house. The house doesn’t have any camera.