Kolkata man mummifies mother’s body, keeps it in freezer for 3 years in house

kolkata

Updated: Apr 05, 2018 20:48 IST

A leather technologist in his fifties was detained by Kolkata police on Wednesday night after he was found living with his mother’s body that he had preserved in a refrigerator at his house for the past three years.

Police said Subhabrata Majumdar had been withdrawing his mother’s pension for the past three years.

Subhabrata Majumdar’s mother Bina died on April 7, 2015 in a private nursing home. But Majumdar applied ‘mummification’ techniques to preserve her body in a commercial freezer used to store ice-cream and frozen food in stores, police said.

Majumdar was detained from his two-storey house in Behala on the southern fringes of Kolkata by officers from the local station and the Kolkata homicide department, who were acting on a tip-off. Majumdar’s father Gopal, who too lives at the house, is also being questioned.

Police found a second freezer, similar to the one in which he kept his mother’s body, at the house. Both freezers were on the first floor. The Majumdars used to stay on the ground floor.





Police take away the body of Bina that was mumified and kept frozen for three years by her son Subhabrata Majumdar (left) at his home in Kolkata.

“Subhabrata Majumdar used a debit card to withdraw cash from the pension account of his mother. We are investigating why the bank kept the pension account alive for the past three years without life certificates,” Nilanjan Biswas, deputy commissioner (south west division) of Kolkata Police told reporters.

Bina and Gopal Majumdar worked at the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Subhabrata Majumdar worked for a leather products company, but left the job five years ago.

A police officer said Majumdar had removed the internal organs from his mother’s body for preservation. “Chemicals such as formaldehyde were used for preservation,” said the officer on condition of anonymity.

Locals said the Majumdars kept aloof and did not mix with anyone in the neighbourhood. Neighbours’ suspicions grew when a high-tonnage air conditioning machine was installed in the vacant first floor. The machine used to run all the time, the neighbours told police.

The incident is eerily similar to a case at Robinson Street in 2015. A 46-year-old software engineer, Partha De, spent about six months with the bodies of his elder sister and two pet dogs in his flat. His father Aurobindo De also lived in the same flat.

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