Violent husband, abusive son & Peeping Tom: Skeletons tumble out of toto driver’s cupboard
Times of India | 10 February 2025
12 Kolkata: Wife beater, Peeping Tom, habitual drunkard, known gambler, and an extremely violent and abusive man — Soumitra Roy alias Raj, the toto driver arrested for the murder and rape of a class VIII girl in New Town, was dreaded by his kin and neighbours. Speaking to TOI, hours after his arrest on Sunday, Roy's wife Mousumi (19) said he had been arrested on charges of molesting and abusing a friend's girlfriend four years ago at a fair in his hometown Ranaghat. She said he was in jail for eight months, and still has to appear in a Ranaghat court in March in connection with the case.
"Marrying him was the biggest mistake of my life. Thankfully, our marriage hasn't been registered yet. He used to beat and abuse me regularly. But I forgave him as we were in love. But now, I feel disgusted for allowing him in my life. I demand the strictest punishment for him," she said.
She said they got married 13 months ago and shifted to a rented house in Gourangagar Adarshapally — around a km from the 14-year-old victim's home — around three months ago. Roy initially worked as a mason but had started driving the toto for the last two weeks.
Roy's mother also shifted with them from Ranaghat but after a tiff with Roy, she rented another home in the same neighbourhood. "He is extremely abusive, and I have severed ties with him," she told reporters on Sunday.
Mousumi said Roy returned home in the early hours of Friday and picked her up from outside a relative's place, dropped the toto at its owner's place before walking back home. "He usually returns late and is abusive almost all the time. But since he returned on Friday, he was calm and wasn't abusive at all. He drank and smoked at home and even went out for work but behaved well with me. On Saturday night, I accompanied him in the toto as we picked passengers. While leaving the handicrafts fair, cops stopped us, asked the passengers to get off, and took us to the PS," Mousumi said.
"I had no clue what he had done. The cops told me about his deeds and showed me CCTV footage. I can never forgive him," she said.
The landlord, Bidyut Barai, said Roy used to regularly beat up his wife. "There was regular trouble at their home. He was also irregular in paying rent. I asked him many times to behave properly but he listened to none," Barai said.
Anwesha Das, a neighbour, added: "He was a filthy man. He was extremely abusive and I even caught him peeping through bathroom windows."
Soma Das, another neighbour, said she thought Roy had changed after seeing his behaviour over the last two days. "He was not creating trouble at home. But who knew he had committed such a heinous crime? We have seen Sanjoy Roy escape gallows. But Raj should be hanged," she said.