Two men have been arrested in connection with the murder of a woman from Narendrapur, who was found dead in a lane in Haridevpur on Tuesday morning.
Police said the accused, Arunava Patra and Arjun Das, worked for a private security agency.
While Patra allegedly killed Dalia Chakrabarty following a dispute over Rs 4,000 that she insisted he owed her, Das stands accused of helping him dispose of the body.
Patra was arrested in Sonarpur, on the southern fringes of the city, on Tuesday night and Das was picked up from Duttapukur in North 24-Parganas district early on Wednesday.
The two have been charged with murder, criminal conspiracy and tampering with evidence, the police said.
“Investigations revealed that Dalia, in her 30s, had left her Kheyadah home in Narendrapur around 3.40pm on Monday. She told her husband that she was stepping out to collect dues from a business partner in Haridevpur. She did not return that night,” an officer said.
The next morning some residents of the Nonar Math area of Haridevpur spotted a woman, wearing salwar kameez, lying still in a narrow lane. The police took the woman, later identified as Dalia Chakrabarty, to MR Bangur Hospital in Tollygunge, where she was declared dead.
A preliminary post-mortem report suggests Dalia was strangled to death around midnight, the officer said.
The police came to know that Dalia called on Patra at his rented apartment in Haridevpur on Monday afternoon. The two were supposed to meet a client in the evening but he did not turn up, officers said.
“Dalia’s husband called her up around 7.30pm to know where she was. She sent her location on his phone. After that her husband failed to connect with her,” said an officer of Haridevpur police station.
Sleuths learnt that there was an altercation between Patra, who the officers said was drunk, and Dalia over the amount he owed her. The woman apparently told him that he owed her Rs 4,000 but he claimed that the amount was much less.
“There was a fight between the two and in the heat of the moment Patra strangled Dalia with her dupatta. He later realised that Dalia was dead and kept the body in his apartment for some time before calling up Arjun Das for help in disposing of the body,” the officer said.
“Early on Tuesday, the two lifted the body, walked around 30 metres and left it at the spot where residents of the locality found it a few hours later.”
The two left Haridevpur soon after. While Patra went to Entally and then Sonarpur, Das went back home to Duttapukur by train.