The decomposed body of an elderly man, who lived alone and police suspect was murdered, was found under a bed in his flat in Bijoygarh on Tuesday afternoon.
The police said the body of 67-year-old Nidhir Chandra Kundu was wrapped in a transparent polythene sheet and a bedsheet. His relatives have told the police that Kundu’s mobile phone and laptop and a television set were missing from the house.
“A preliminary inquiry suggests this is a murder for gain. The body has been sent for post-mortem to ascertain the cause of death. There was no sign of ransacking on the bed. The body was found under the bed. A lot of blood stains have been found,” said Atul V, deputy commissioner in charge of the south suburban division of Kolkata police.
Sources in the homicide wing of the detective department said they were looking for a person whose call Kundu had last received on his phone on Sunday. “Possibly he was expecting someone on Sunday night,” an officer said.
A neighbour who found a stack of newspapers outside Kundu’s flat and was alerted by a stench got in touch with the victim’s brother Adhir Kundu on Tuesday morning. The brother contacted their sister, who lives in Santoshpur and had a duplicate key to the Bijoygarh apartment.
The family approached the police on finding Kundu’s body in the flat.
Nidhir Chandra Kundu
The police said they had tracked the last tower location of Kundu’s stolen mobile phone to Kulpi in South 24-Parganas, more than 50km from the victim’s home.
A retired state government employee, Kundu had been living in the flat on the first floor of a three-storey building for many years, said neighbours. He had been living alone since the death of his wife a few years ago, they said.
“My brother was a very jovial person. I last spoke with him on Friday night. He was absolutely normal,” said Kundu’s sister.
Investigators said that when they entered the apartment on Tuesday afternoon, they found the fan in one of the rooms on but the lights were all switched off.
“This could mean that the victim was killed in the daytime when there was no need to switch on the lights,” said an officer.
A bowl of cooked chicken curry was found in the kitchen, the officer added.
The building where the incident happened is in a residential neighbourhood dotted with standalone houses as well as multi-storeyed buildings.
One of the neighbours told the police that Kundu was last seen on Saturday night while returning home after buying chapatis for dinner.
The building opposite Kundu’s has a CCTV camera, whose footage has been collected by the police.
Two LPG cylinders — one new and the other empty — have been found inside the house, an officer said.
“The victim did not have any domestic help. We are trying to find out who visited him in the last two days. There were no apparent marks of struggle in the house,” said an officer at Lalbazar.