Kolkata: In a rather eerie spate of events, a 56-year-old Kolkata woman was staying with the dead body of her octogenarian father for at least two days till police recovered the body Wednesday morning. The police offcials were alerted after the neighbours had complained of a stench coming from the house at Behala in south-west Kolkata, police offcials said.
Police and neighbours said that the incident was a strange and eerie repeat of what the damily did with two other family members two years ago.
In February, when Debasis Chatterjee, 47, died, the old couple and their daughter continued living with the corpses without informing the police about their son’s death. The police eventually recovered the partially decomposed body of their son.
“Wednesday morning we recovered the body of 86-year-old Rabindranath Chatterjee. He must have died two to three days ago. The neighbours informed us as they were getting a foul smell from the house,” said a senior officer of the local police station.
The police said that while the woman, Nilanjana Chatterjee, was mentally challenged, her father was bed-ridden for more than a year. Hence, she could not know that hear father was dead. The police have sent the woman to a hospital.
“This was not the first time that the family had lived with the corpses of their kin until the bodies started decomposing. So when the neighbours got a rotting smell from the house they were sure that something has happened and immediately informed the police,” said Sandip Malakar, a local resident.
Debasis Chatterjee, their son, used to work as a security guard and a courier boy for some time. However, he was unemployed during the time of his death. The family used to run on Rabindranath Chatterjee’s frugal retirement benefits.
“It is a very unfortunate incident. We have seen the family members dying one by one. The woman, Nilanjana Chatterjee, was mentally challenged and didn’t understand that her mother had died,” said Uttam Saha, another resident.
PNN