A 42-year-old man, who had apparently suffered huge losses after investing heavily in the stock market over the last two years, and his 70-year-old mother were found dead in their house in Subhashgram, on the southern fringes of Kolkata, on Friday evening.
Police said Gautam Purkyastha was found dead on the floor of the dining room of the house and Tapati, his mother, on a bed inside a room.
Officers said it appeared Gautam had consumed pesticide after killing his mother.
A clearer sequence of events would emerge only after the final post-mortem reports were available, the police said.
The discovery came on Friday evening when Gautam’s wife Rakhi returned home after attending a family function at her parent’s house in Mograhat in South 24-Parganas. She found the door of the house locked from inside. The lights were off and she could see nothing through the windows that were left open. Rakhi informed her neighbours and alerted the police who came and broke down the door.
“Primarily, we have learnt that Gautam was into shares and had suffered huge losses over the last two years,” said a senior police officer of Sonarpur police station.
“It appears he had even sold the ancestral house and invested the amount in shares to make a turnaround. But even that did not help,” the officer said.
A section of neighbours have told police that the family was ridden by regular bouts of tiffs and Gautam had apparently told a few of his close friends in Subhashgram that he was fed up. On a few occasions, some of the neighbours had to intervene in the family squabbles.
The family, investigators have learnt, was struggling to make ends meet and Gautam’s savings were depleting fast.
Gautam’s wife has told the police that she had gone to her parent’s house on Wednesday to attend the rice feeding ceremony of a relative’s child and Gautam had accompanied her. He returned home on Thursday and Rakhi had stayed back.
“The wife told us that she had spoken to her husband even on Friday afternoon. Gautam apparently offered to fetch her from Sonarpur station when she returned. But she asked him not to,” the officer said.
“Some of the neighbours had last spotted Gautam speaking over his mobile phone outside his house on Friday morning,” the officer said.
Rakhi returned home around 7pm and found the house locked.
The police said there were no injury marks on the bodies of both the deceased.
The two were rushed to a hospital nearby where doctors declared them dead.