Missing woman’s family got freak death news from TV
Times of India | 15 July 2024
Kolkata: The middle-aged woman, whose body was recovered from a pit dug up by KMC on Bidhan Sarani near Kashi Bose Lane on Saturday, was identified as a mentally-challenged woman, Suparna Seal (45). She lived barely 700 metres from the spot.
After scanning the CCTV footage of the neighbourhood and speaking to several residents, cops suspected that she might have fallen into the pit accidentally on Thursday morning.
Later, heavy rain filled it up with water. After the incident was aired on TV news channels, the woman’s relatives rushed to the nearby Shyampukur and Burtolla police stations with her photograph. Late on Saturday night, they identified the victim’s body at RG Kar morgue. An orphan, the unmarried woman lived with her uncle, his family and a widow sister-in-law at a small one-storeyed house on Raja Kali Krishna second lane near Sovabazar Rajbari.
“She had left home on Thursday around 3.45am. It was her daily routine that she would leave home quite early and return around noon. But, that day she didn’t return even at night. We didn’t worry much as sometimes she would return home only after a day or two. We started worrying only after Friday evening. We looked for her at a number of places,” said Jnana Ranjan Seal, the woman’s uncle.
Sujata Seal, the woman’s sister-in-law, said, “Since there had been at least two instances when she had returned on her own, we didn’t lodge a police complaint. But after we heard the news of someone’s body being recovered from the pit, we rushed to the police station with her photograph and it turned out to be Phulu (Suparna’s nickname),” said Sujata. Cops said a preliminary postmortem report hinted at death caused by asphyxiation and also confirmed multiple injuries due to fall.
“We are still probing into all the angles,” said a senior officer of Kolkata Police. The pit was dug up to lay a new pipeline. It was covered with loose soil after KMC finished the work on July 9. “Agencies should cover the mouth of the pits after work gets over,” demanded Kaushik Dutta, a resident of Kashi Bose Lane.