The body of Shobha Ray Hazra, 44, arrived in a coffin Friday at her residence in Shantipur under Bengal’s Nadia district almost 20 days after she was murdered in Portugal.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Shobha Ray Hazra’s elder daughter Ratna Hazra said, “My mother had gone to Switzerland on a tourist visa in 2021 or 2022. She had decided to stay back, and then she had travelled to France, and finally one and a half years ago, she had gone to Portugal and decided to settle there. She told us that she got Portugal’s green card, which means she was a permanent resident of the country.”
Ratna Hazra is an MA student and she lives with her younger sister. Their father works in another state.
The daughter said Shobha Ray Hazra did not share much about her personal life and they came to know that she was living in Portugal after she had fallen ill and got hospitalised about a year ago.
“The local restaurant in Portugal where my mother worked had called us sometime in February saying that she had been murdered. We then contacted the Indian Embassy in Lisbon and the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi and sent an email to them saying that my mother was missing and we were unable to contact her,” added Ratna Hazra.
According to the deceased’s daughter, the local police in Portugal did not contact them, nor did they inform them what happened to their mother.
“A death certificate has been sent to us, but we cannot understand anything as it is in Portuguese. All we want is that if there is any case document, then that be sent to us,” said Ratna Hazra.
The family had sought BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar’s help for bringing back the body to India. “Repatriating the body is a very lengthy process, we had thus contacted the MP if he could help us. BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar certainly helped us a lot,” said Ratna Hazra.
BJP MP and state party president Majumdar said, “Shobha Ray Hazra had gone to Portugal and worked in a restaurant in Lisbon. This is a very common picture of Bengal, where people travel to other states or countries in search of a job, but she was murdered. The family contacted me as there were a lot of formalities. I made arrangements for the family to get the body as soon as possible, and the family got the body after around 20 days. I am grateful that I was able to stand by the family in such a trying time.”