Police recovered the body of a man packed in a trolley bag from a cab, along the Kalyani Expressway, on the intervening night between Tuesday and Wednesday. The body was recovered after an app-based driver became “suspicious” of his passengers’ request to be dropped in a “secluded, dark area”.
Krishna Ram Singh and Karan Singh allegedly hired the cab from Nagerbazar, Dumdum, to be dropped off near the Muragacha Bridge in Ghola Mohispota, under the jurisdiction of the Ghola police station. They have now been arrested.
“I had the Madhyamgram incident in mind,” the driver Rahul Adhikari later told mediapersons. “When they asked me to stop the car at an isolated place, I got suspicious and asked them to show me what was inside the bag since it looked very heavy. They refused. I decided to dial 100 but before that, I saw a police van and I waved. Before that, they tried to pay me extra money, which further confirmed my doubt. Police came and discovered the body.”
When the Ghola police patrol van arrived, one of the two accused allegedly fled the scene, while the other was apprehended on the spot. When police opened the bag which was stowed inside the car’s trunk, they found the body wrapped in sellotape.
The deceased has been identified as Bhagaram Singh, who had a clothing business, and was a native of Rajasthan. He was allegedly murdered in a godown and his clothes were found in a dustbin, police said. The body has been sent for an autopsy.
“Prima facie, he was first attacked with a knife on the throat and then strangled to death. However, the post mortem report will clear the actual cause of death,” said an official.
A joint investigation by Ghola police and Nagerbazar police is now trying to determine if more people were involved, decipher the motive behind the murder, and examine CCTV footage from surrounding areas.
This incident follows a case on February 25 where residents at Kumartuli Ghat in Kolkata’s Madhyamgram apprehended two women attempting to dispose of a body in a trolley bag into the Ganges river.