india

Updated: Oct 21, 2019 21:31 IST

A local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was murdered and chopped into pieces by a man over suspicion that he was having an affair with his wife, on Friday night in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, police said on Monday.

Matiur Rehman and his wife Sonali Bibi were arrested on Monday for the murder of Subhash Chandra Dey, the CPI(M)’s Baspara branch committee secretary in Nanoor, around 160km from Kolkata.

“We have arrested Rehman and his wife. After Dey was killed, Rehman chopped the body and packed the pieces in two big sacks,” Birbhum’s superintendent of police Shyam Singh said.

Parts of Dey’s body were found in a sack hidden inside a bamboo grove in the Mamudpur area. Rehman allegedly dumped another sack in the Ajay River.

“Rehman has admitted before us that he killed Dey with a crowbar when he found him in a compromising position with his wife after returning home on Friday,” Singh said.

“I could not control my anger when I saw him with my wife,” Rehman said while being taken to court.

Dey, also an insurance agent, went missing on Friday and a day later his motorcycle was found outside a private technical college at Basapara in Nanoor. This led Dey’s family and the local CPI(M) to suspect that he had either been kidnapped or murdered because of political reasons.

Dey was one of the accused in the killing of 11 landless farmers, allegedly by CPI(M) cadres, at Nanoor in 2000. The killings had rocked the state. Dey was sentenced to jail by the district court but later released by Calcutta High Court.

On Friday, Dey left his house saying he would go to Illambazar to meet a client. He visited the insurance company’s office in Bolpur and went to Illambazar. He was also seen at Joydeb on Friday evening when he talked to his wife over the phone for the last time.

“To dump the evidence, Rehman carried the sacks on Dey’s motorcycle. Later, he left the vehicle in front of a private technical college in Nanoor,” an officer of Nanoor police station said on condition of anonymity.

Asgar Ali, area committee secretary of the CPI(M) in Nanoor, said there could be other reasons behind the murder.

“The police may find it during the investigation,” Ali said.