The bodies of a 30-year-old woman and her mother were found in a bedroom on the top floor of their three-storey house in Salt Lake’s CD Block on Friday, exactly a month after the death of the father.
Police said Sneha Ghosh and her mother Sampurna, 56, had left a suicide note, signed by both in front of a garlanded photograph of Snehashish Ghosh, who passed away because of natural causes.
The front door of their house was locked. A team from Bidhannagar North police station and some neighbours and relatives broke the door and found them lying inside a bedroom.
The family used to stay on the third floor of their three-storey house, while Snehashish’s brother lived on the ground floor. The second floor was occupied by tenants.
An officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said they had recovered a bottle from the bedroom and the daughter and the mother had foam coming out of their mouth.
“Preliminarily it seems that they had consumed poison. We are awaiting the final post-mortem results,” said the officer.
All the taps in the house had been kept open and the drains were also blocked by pieces of cloth, the officer said.
The police suspect the women did that to ensure that water flowing out alerted relatives and neighbours and the bodies would not rot for long.
They had also kept Rs 20,000 on the bedside and had asked one of the neighbours in the suicide note to perform their last rites.
Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation councillor of Ward 40, Tulsi Sinha Roy under whose jurisdiction CD Block falls, said she knew the family quite well and termed the incident as “shocking”.
According to Roy, Sneha had completed a postgraduate programme in psychology from Rajabazar Science College.
“Snehashish Ghosh had passed barely a month back because of natural causes. Sneha was a bright student and was working with a Pune-based firm. She had married but got a divorce and used to stay with her parents. They were financially stable. It seems the mother and the daughter could not cope with Snehashish’s death,” Roy said.
Bus crash kills auto driver
A 48-year-old autorickshaw driver died after a state bus hit his vehicle in Haridevpur on Friday morning.
Three passengers on board the auto sustained injuries.
Police said around 6.45am a Haridevpur-Howrah route (S4) bus, hit a Thakurpkur-Kabardanga route auto on MG Road while trying to negotiate another vehicle in front. The autorickshaw came in front of the bus allegedly at a high speed from the opposite side.
The bus driver was arrested, the police said.