A couple and their 21-year-old daughter, a law student, were found hanging from ceiling fans in two rooms of their rented apartment in a four-storeyed building in Regent Park on the southern fringes of Kolkata on Sunday.
Police suspect a financial crisis drove the family to suicide. The main door of the apartment had to be broken before the bodies of Bijoy Chatterjee, wife Ranu and their daughter Oindrilla were brought down, said an officer of Regent Park police station.
The police said Chatterjee ran a small business in northwest Kolkata’s Burrabazar and his wife was a homemaker. Their daughter was a student at a law college in Falta.
“We were alerted to a foul smell that residents of the locality said was emanating from a first-floor flat in a four-storeyed building on School Road. A team went to the building and found the apartment locked from the inside. The owner of the apartment was contacted and the door was broken,” said an officer.
Chatterjee and his wife were found hanging from the hook of the ceiling fan in one of the bedrooms, while their daughter was found in the same position in another room.
All three were brought down and taken to SSKM Hospital, where they were declared dead.
The officer said no suicide note was found. The cops found the Aadhaar cards of the Chatterjees and learnt that they were original residents of Brahma Samaj Lane in southwest Kolkata’s Garden Reach.
“On inquiry, it was found that Bijoy Chatterjee ran a small business in Burrabazar which suffered huge losses. The family was under tremendous financial crisis. Their rent for a month was due and their electricity bills were unpaid,” said the officer.
The family had shifted to the apartment, on the southern fringes of the city, six months ago. “It’s not yet clear why they had left home and shifted to a rented apartment,” the officer said.
A neighbour said he had not seen any of the family members step out in the last “three-four days”.
The police said they had contacted two brothers of Chatterjee. One of the brothers lives in Garden Reach and the other in Tarakeswar.
“Neighbours said the family mostly kept to themselves,” said an officer.