Officers scanning Subir Chaki’s mobile phone call records stumbled upon Vicky Halder as the only person, apart from family members and acquaintances, who allegedly called up the slain managing director several times between Saturday and Sunday morning.
Police on Wednesday afternoon arrested Mithu Halder, 42, Vicky’s mother, in connection with the murder of Chaki, 61, and his driver Rabin Mondal, 65.
Chaki, managing director of Kilburn Engineering Ltd, was found dead on the first floor of his three-storey ancestral house on Kankulia Road, off Golpark, on Sunday night. Mondal was found dead on the second floor.
Both had deep cuts on several parts of their bodies.
Officers said late on Wednesday they were searching for Vicky, who they suspect had gone to the Kankulia Road house posing as a potential buyer of the property.
Chaki had been trying to sell the house for more than a year.
Officers said they learnt after interrogating Mithu, her younger son and brother since Tuesday that the family was planning to buy a house near Ballygunge. So when Chaki floated an advertisement seeking buyers for the Kankulia Road house, they contacted him.
The Halders stay on rent on the ground floor of a two-storey house in Diamond Harbour, in South 24-Parganas. Mithu apparently told the police that she worked as a help at a teacher’s house in Diamond Harbour.
“Chaki had fixed the price of the house at Rs 1.5 crore. That was beyond the reach of the Halders. They found out that Chaki rode a Mercedes and knew he was rich,” said an officer of Kolkata police’s detective department.
Mithu is said to have told the police during interrogation that Vicky and she had planned to go to Chaki’s house on Sunday, snatch all the cash and other valuables from him and flee.
Vicky is said to have met Chaki on an earlier occasion, too. For the Sunday meeting, he had identified himself by a different name while talking to Chaki over the phone.
“We have come to know that Vicky and a few associates went into the house and Mithu was waiting outside,” said the officer. “When they tried to rob Chaki, he recognised Vicky from the earlier meeting. So Vicky killed him. They had to kill the driver, too, as he had seen them before,” said the officer.
Before calling on Mithu, officers reached out to the owner of the house in Diamond Harbour where her family stays on rent.
The sleuths learnt from the owner’s family that the Halders had taken the ground floor of the double-storey house on rent for 11 months.
“When the landlord demanded the rent for September a few days back, Mithu told him she would clear the dues after receiving a huge amount soon. She even claimed that the amount was so big that the Halders could buy two such houses,” said an officer.
The landlord’s wife also told the investigators that she had seen Mithu wash a blood-stained shirt on Monday. When asked, Mithu apparently told her that her elder son had hurt himself during immersion.
Mithu had allegedly tried killing her husband in December 2020 by tying his hands and legs. Neighbours came to the man’s rescue.
The Diamond Harbour police had then arrested Mithu on an attempt to murder charge. She was released on bail.
On Tuesday night, when the police finally reached the woman, she feigned ignorance and said Vicky was not around. The officers then called on Mithu’s younger son and her brother, who live in different houses in Diamond Harbour,
While trying to track down Vicky, the cops found his cellphone switched off. Subsequent scans of Chaki’s call records revealed that Vicky had called him several times. The tower locations revealed the calls were made from Naipara in Diamond Harbour’s Panchantala.
What confirmed the possible location of the assassins was the trail that sniffer dogs of the detective department of Kolkata police took on Tuesday morning, said an officer of the detective department.
The dogs walked from the Kankulia Road house to platform number 2 of Ballygunge railway station, suggesting that the visitors had taken a train to leave the area.
By then, the police had found from CCTV footage that two youths were walking down the road in front of Chaki's house towards Ballygunge station with a woman.
Officers said that while Vicky’s mobile phone would remain switched on and off intermittently, that of others were on and the tower location details showed they were stationary.
On Tuesday night, a team of officers left Kolkata for Diamond Harbour and reached Mithu tracing the tower locations of one of the mobile phones under the scanner.
Mithu has been charged with criminal conspiracy, police said.
