Mystery shrouds 2013 death of father as well

KOLKATA: Outside, the two-storeyed house at BE-220 Salt Lake was plastered with identity proofs of a dead father, a presumed to-be-alive mother and a 38-year-old son. Inside, the 77-year-old mom lay dead and rotting for 18 days — guarded by the son with every door and window shut as tight as possible — till he sought help to dig a grave for her from an acquaintance who lived on Beadon Street The only indication of what had happened inside were two words — ominous in hindsight —etched above one of the many identity proofs (his mother’s pension card) plastered on the house’s walls: “NOW LATE”.Kolkata woke up to another house-of-horrors story on Monday morning — the fourth in three years (after Robinson Street, Paikpara and the Behala freezer case) — which coincided with the start of the week that would mark the passing of 2018 and the arrival of 2019.The first hint that something sinister could have happened at the upscale Salt Lake neighbourhood came when a CID officer called up Bidhannagar North cops on Sunday evening. This officer said he got a call from a relative, who had been approached by Salt Lake resident Maitreya Bhattacharya for help to bury his mom’s body.Cops got a first peek into the Salt Lake residence two hours after that call, at 10 pm on Sunday, and a scene eerily reminiscent of the 2015 Robinson Street case greeted them: a maggot infested human body lay on an upturned wooden cupboard in an unlit room, with the son claiming to be waiting for an “auspicious moment” to bury the body.TOI entered the house on Monday morning when cops returned with Maitreya for a round of on-the-spot probe and questioning. Krishna Bhattacharya (his mom) died 18 days ago, he told cops matter-of-factly. “I was waiting for it to rot for three more days and would have buried her at our home after the 21-day cycle was complete,” he said, explaining that he had “learnt this ritual was auspicious according to the doctrine” he and his mother believed in.Krishna taught at a girls’ school in Bhowanipore till her retirement and his father, Gorachand Bhattacharya, was a urosurgeon at the state’s premier government-run health institute, SSKM Hospital. Gorachand passed away in 2013.A next-door neighbour said, “The youth’s father, too, died under mysterious circumstances. Some said he set himself on fire while others said his clothes had accidentally caught fire while he was lighting a lamp during a puja at home.”Monday’s horror comes three years after 44-year-old Partho De was found living with the skeleton of his dead sister and two pet dogs for six months at their Robinson Street home. And, eight months back, Behala resident Subhabrata Majumdar was found having preserved his dead mother’s body for three years in an industrial freezer. A police probe found De had preserved his sister’s remains in the hope that she would come back to life one day.Till Monday evening, Bidhannagar cops were yet to come out with a reason behind Maitreya’s bizarre act; they went on questioning Maitreya and sent the body for post-mortem. “We have started a case of unnatural death and are awaiting the preliminary post-mortem report to find out when and how his mom died,” Bidhannagar deputy commissioner (headquarters) Amit Javalgi said.Maitreya claimed he was a science graduate who had to leave his Masters in Computer Application course halfway because of father Gorachand’s death. “I went to an acquaintance’s Beadon Street house for help in finding labourers who could dig a grave in our courtyard. But the man didn’t help me and called the cops instead,” Maitreya told TOI. The Beadon Street resident, Tarun Talukdar, who used to be Gorachand’s patient, was taken aback by Maitreya’s bizarre request and promptly called up one of his relatives, a CID officer.BE-220, with its unplastered walls and the bizarre recent display of identity proofs, had always been a misfit in the uppermiddle-class neighbourhood, neighbours said. The family preferred to stay alone and hardly ever socialised. Maitreya showed traits of “being schizophrenic” and his mother shut herself out from the world after Gorachand’s death, added next-door neighbours.Maitreya was at the Bidhannagar North police station till Monday night as cops looked in vain for some relatives. “He has not been arrested and he seems to have no kin. So he is staying back at the police station,” a senior official said.