A 42-year-old sales executive of a private firm was found dead in the washroom attached to his bedroom on the first floor of his two-storey house in Haridevpur, on the southern fringes of the city, on Tuesday night.
Shiddhanta Bhattacharya, nicknamed Bappa, had injury marks on his body and the back of his head was bludgeoned, police said.
“It appears to be a case of murder and more than two assassins seem to have been involved,” said an officer of Haridevpur police station.
“There were blood stains on the floor leading to the washroom. The bedroom was ransacked. The body had started decomposing.”
The police came to know after preliminary investigations that Bhattacharya used to live alone on the first floor. His wife lives in Bangalore. Their daughter is married and stays with her husband.
Bhattacharya chose to keep the ground floor locked, refusing to rent it out despite requests.
Officers from the local police station and the detective department have learnt that Bhattacharya’s wife had last spoken to him on Sunday. His mobile phone has remained switched off since then.
“On Tuesday evening she called one of us and asked to find out whether Bappa was in the house or had stepped out,” said a neighbour. “She would make such requests even in the past when her husband would remain incommunicable for some time.”
Following an alert from his wife, a neighbour visited the house and walked up to the first floor, only to find Bhattacharya's blood-stained body lying beside the commode against a wall. The police were alerted. “It is not clear if he was killed in the washroom or on the bed,” the officer said. “The blood stains on the floor suggests there was some movement of the victim after he was hit.”
Bhattacharya’s daughter is said to have told the police that she has learnt that two of her father’s colleagues were to meet him at home on Monday. The police have collected details about them and taken Bhattacharya’s mobile phone to scan the call records.
“Based on a complaint by the son-in-law of the deceased, we have drawn up a murder case,” the officer said.
Youth’s body found in Salt Lake
The body of a 22-year-old youth, identified as Partha Sarathi Paul, was found lying inside the Kolkata Armed Police Housing Complex in Salt Lake’s AF Block on Wednesday afternoon.
Paul was a first-year postgraduate student of Presidency University and an AE Block resident.
The last status on his WhatsApp profile read: “1 and only reason of my suicide is that my college failed meand it took 4 years to graduate...”
An official from the university said it was very unfortunate. “Paul did not complain to any of his teachers,” he said.