Mystery trail of blood in city: Brothers’ car crash leads to three dead kin at home
Telegraph | 21 February 2025
A car crash on EM Bypass early on Wednesday morning in which two men and a teenage boy were injured led to the discovery of three dead women at their home in Tangra.
Pranay Kumar Dey, 44, who was in a car that crashed into a Metro pillar near the Avisikta crossing around 3.30am, told police that there were three “female bodies” at their home.
Around 9am, a police team went to 21C Atal Sur Road in Tangra, broke open the lock on the main door of the four-storey building and found three bodies in three bedrooms on the first floor.
A bloodstained knife was found on the second floor, sources said.
The deceased were identified as Pranay’s wife Sudeshna, 39, his younger brother Prasun’s wife Romi, 44, and Prasun’s 14-year-old daughter Priyambada.
There were cut marks on the wrists of the two older women and at least one of them had a slit near her throat, sources who had seen the bodies said. The teenager had no external injury marks.
The police said payesh had been cooked in the house on Monday. The young girl is believed to have consumed the payesh laced with a high dose of sedatives and medicines usually recommended for blood pressure. It is not clear if the others had also consumed the payesh, the police said.
The post-mortem will reveal the exact cause of the deaths, the police said.
Pranay’s 14-year-old son and younger brother Prasun were in the car.
Romi’s father Swapan Kumar Banerjee has lodged a murder complaint based on which the police have started a murder case against “unknown” persons.
The police said the brothers had told them that they had financial problems.
The police are yet to piece together the sequence of events as the statements given by the brothers admitted to Ruby General Hospital are yet to be corroborated.
Calcutta police commissioner Manoj Verma, who went to the crime scene, said the investigators had found something that they were not in a position to divulge till all the evidence matched.
Verma said: “We are not concluding if they (the two men and the boy) went out to end their lives, if they killed the women or if there was any other motive. There are certain other things we know we cannot divulge now. We have to check our facts and see if they are matching with their statements. Everything needs to corroborate after the sequence is reconstructed.”
He added that it was taking time to reconstruct the entire incident as the men were in hospital. “What they are saying has to be matched with the condition of the bodies found in the house. As they are in hospital, the reconstruction will be delayed.”
The chemical examination of the viscera would be “very important” in this case, the police commissioner said.
CCTV footage obtained from the entrance of the building shows the two brothers and the young boy stepping out at 12.51am on Wednesday, getting into their car one by one and driving away. Around two hours later, their car rammed into the Metro railway pillar. It is not clear where the trio had been during this period.
The Dey brothers jointly run their family business of manufacture and export of leather gloves — a business that, neighbours said, they inherited from their father.
“The family used to keep to themselves. The brothers were very close to each other and would always be together. Their families were very well-knit. They did not maintain terms with the outside world, unlike their father. Wenever saw the brothers quarrel on any issue,” said aneighbour.
The four-storey building where the family lived is located in a congested residential area in Tangra, but stands out for having all its glasses tinted, making it apparent that the family maintained their privacy.
Their company — Protective Leather Gloves Pvt Ltd — on 21 Seal Lane, not far from their home, was locked when The Telegraph reached there on Wednesday afternoon. Neighbours said the factory was operational till Tuesday. “Some employees came for work this morning. But they were asked to go, possibly because of the incident that happened today,” said Tanmoy Ghosh, an employee at Surex, a fire fighting equipment company next to the Deys’ factory. The company, according to the police, had an annual turnover of ₹12.87 crore.
Neighbours said that unlike other days, the lights in the house were not turned on on Tuesday evening.
A leather vendor who did business with the Deys said he came to meet the brothers on Tuesday evening after a cheque of ₹23 lakh they had given him earlier bounced.
“I found the mobile phones of both the brothers switched off. I went to the factory and spoke to one of their relatives. He said that their phones and even those of their wives were all switched off. This was very unusual. I returned to their home later in the evening (on Tuesday). Again no one responded to the calling bell. The house was dark,” said Manoj Gupta, the leather supplier.
The bodies of the two women and the young girl have been kept at the NRS Medical College and Hospital morgue. The police said the post-mortem would be done on Thursday.
Pranay’s teenage son underwent surgery for a fractured left humerus bone, said officials of the hospital.