An ordinary morning on the ghats of Ganga in Kolkata near Kumartuli unfolded horrors for a group of locals who had gathered for their daily yoga session.
Kumartuli is the hub of sculptors who build images for Durga Puja, though the rest of the year, it is a quiet neighbourhood.
But today, around 7.30 in the morning, the men saw two women get off a white and blue cab, carrying a purple trolley suitcase.
They tried to drag it towards the river, but even between the two of them, they could not move it.
That evoked suspicion of the yoga enthusiasts and they walked over to the women and started questioning them.
The women, they found, were evasive. They refused to let anyone touch the suitcase. Suspicion spiking, the locals called in the neighbourhood policeman. What emerged shocked everyone.
Bundled up in bloodstained clothes, lay the body of a woman.
“They refused to open the case and told us that it had the body of their dog, a labrador,” said Raja Sau, who runs the yoga camp. “We could not believe it. How much can a lab weigh? 30 or 40 kilos? How could they not drag the suitcase between the two of them? And it was a trolley too””.
All this back and forth, he said, took over half an hour. By then, more than 50 people had gathered.
“With everyone grilling them, one of the women said it had the body of the girl’s sister-in-law who had committed suicide. But if that was the case, how could they dispose of it like that? One takes such a person to the hospital, calls in the police,” he added.
Once the woman admitted to the suitcase containing a dead body, the local cop called in reinforcements.
The police, who arrested the women on the spot, said they were identified as Falguni Ghosh and her mother Aarati Ghosh. The dead woman was Sumita Ghosh, her aunt in-law.
Locals claimed a train ticket was found for the two women. It was initially thought that they took the train from Kazipara to Kumartuli. But the police have recovered a CCTV footage from Madhyamgram near Kolkata, that showed them carrying the suitcase in a cart to a nearby taxi stand. They had taken a cab straight to Kumartuli, the police said.
Sources said the women were residents of Madhyamgram. Preliminary investigations revealed that the mother and daughter had been living there for over two years at a rented accommodation.
Local sources claimed strangers were seen coming to the house at night, but no one had any details, since the family largely kept to themselves.
A few days ago, a woman was seen coming to the house at night, sources said. Further investigations are on.
The incident, coming on the heels of the triple murder at Tangra, has horrified the city. Last week, two women and a girl were found dead at a house after the men of the family crashed a car at the city’s arterial Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in the early hours of the morning.
The men — Pranay and Prasun Dey — had said they were attempting suicide and the women too had already died by suicide.
The police now say the women – wives of the two brothers and the daughter of one — had been murdered and the men were responsible. An arrest would be made once the men recover from their injuries.
