Kolkata Police arrest couple a day after family of three found dead in Haltu
Telegraph | 7 March 2025
Pradip Ghoshal and his wife Nilima were arrested by the Kasba police on Wednesday in the mysterious deaths of a family of three.
The three, auto-rickshaw driver Somnath Roy, his wife, Sumitra, and their toddler, Rudranil, were found hanging in two separate rooms on Tuesday morning.
Investigating the case on the basis of two separate FIRs filed by the family members of Sumitra, the cops found scribbled on two walls names of lenders. On another wall, the couple had blamed Ghoshal for a long-running property dispute in their two-storey home in Haltu's Purbapally in south Kolkata.
The Ghoshal couple was arrested on charges of abetment to suicide and murder. The couple will be produced in court later in the day. The post-mortem report on the Roys and their two-and-half-year-old son Rudranil is also scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
The earning member in the family, Somnath was in debt.
“From what is written on the wall it seems the people whom he had borrowed money from were demanding their money from him. We have got all the names. They will be interrogated separately,” a senior police officer said.
Somnath and his family lived on the same premises as the Ghoshals. Somnath’s maternal uncle and aunt also lived there. The families were in a dispute over ownership of the house.
The cops have not yet been able to piece together the sequence of events. It is not known whether Somnath killed his wife and son before ending his life, or if Sumitra too died by suicide.
“There are many unanswered questions about the case. Some part of it will be clear once we get the post-mortem report. We will seek custody of the Ghoshals for questioning about the nature of the dispute and everything that had transpired,” said the officer.
According to the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita section 108, in case of a suicidal death if any person is found to be involved in abetting the act shall be punished with imprisonment for 10 years.