Mithu Halder, arrested for her alleged involvement in the murder of Subir Chaki, managing director of Kilburn Engineering Ltd, and his driver lived at three rented houses in Diamond Harbour over the past year.
On Thursday, The Telegraph visited several neighbourhoods of the South 24-Parganas town to know about the accused.
Mithu grew up in Diamond Harbour and shifted to Kankulia Road near Golpark after her marriage, said some of her neighbours since 2020.
A landlady of the first rented house in Diamond Harbour said Mithu had allegedly trussed her husband up one day, covered his mouth in tape and stuffed him inside a quilt, with the help of elder son Vicky and a couple of other persons.
Vicky, suspected of murdering Chaki and Mondal, is on the run.
The landlady of the third house remembered Mithu as a ‘docile woman’ who did not talk much. She was surprised to find Mithu washing bloodstained clothes on Monday afternoon, a day before police picked her up.
Chaki and Mondal were found dead in the former’s ancestral home in Kankulia Road on Sunday night.
Mithu’s brother, Tarun Halder, had rented two rooms in a house in Kopathat, another locality of Diamond Harbour, in July 2020.
Tarun first lived with his octogenarian mother but was later joined by Bilash, Mithu’s younger son.
Bilash and Tarun were picked up for questioning.
House 1
Mithu’s first address was a two-storey house in a locality called Bhagabanpur.
Mithu and her two sons, Vicky and Bilash, had rented a room on the ground floor of the house, owned by two brothers who run a medicine dealership in the area.
A landlady of the house, the wife of the younger brother, recounted an incident of December 2020 that had “stunned the entire neighbourhood”.
The landlady, Pompa Halder, had discovered Mithu’s husband “completely trussed up with nylon ropes and his face covered with tapes”.
When Mithu arrived as a tenant, just before the lockdown last year, she is said to have told the owners that she had been deserted by her husband, Subhas Halder.
“But after a few months, a man arrived. Mithu introduced him as her husband,” said Pompa.
Another tenant had complained to Pompa about “frequent brawls” in Mithu's room, prompting the landlady to pay a sudden visit to the ground floor.
“I saw Mithu eating in the kitchen. When I asked her about her husband, she said he had left. I got suspicious and banged on the door before getting in,” said Pompa.
Mithu, her elder son and a couple of others had together tied up her husband and stuffed him inside a quilt, alleged Pompa.
An 11-minute video Pompa shared with this newspaper shows two persons resembling Mithu and Vicky take almost 10 minutes to cut the tapes covering his mouth and untie the man.
Mithu was arrested. When she returned, apparently after getting bail, she was asked to leave.
The first house in Diamond Harbour’s Bhagabanpur where Mithu Halder lived on rent. Mithu and her two sons, Vicky and Bilash, had rented a room on the ground floor of the house, police said. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta
House 3
The house from where Mithu was arrested on Wednesday is in a neighbourhood called Naiapara, around 2km from the first house.
She used to live alone. She had apparently told the landlady that she was a widow and had two sons, who visited her once in a while.
On Monday afternoon, landlady Pampa Gayen saw Mithu washing bloodstained clothes in a tub in the courtyard. “Mithu said her son was hurt in a puja immersion procession,” said Gayen.
The first signs of panic betrayed Mithu on Tuesday morning.
Police had knocked on the doors of the house, enquiring about Mithu, the night before.
“I had not told her anything about the cops. But the next morning, I confronted her asking what she had been up to. Mithu said people might come looking for her but I should not tell anything about her to anybody,” Gayen recounted.
House 2
In between the first and third houses, Mithu and her elder son had spent some months at another house in Naiapara.
The wife and son of the landlord, and other tenants, said Vicky would “always” talk over the phone.
“He always acted smart. When I asked him about a month’s unpaid rent, he said he was up to something big and would buy much bigger houses in the future,” said Purnima Halder, the landlady.