KOLKATA: Subhabrata Majumdar planned to keep his mother’s remains for 25 years, by which time medical science would advance so much that it would be possible to breathe life back into a refrigerated body, he told cops during interrogation on Friday before being granted bail by a local court.
The 46-year-old leather technology graduate went to the extent of learning Russian to study anatomy textbooks in that language and indulged in relentless “internet-based research” to back up his college education as he bought two industrial fridges and two two-tonne air-conditioners to make a tomb out of a ground-floor room at the family’s
Behala home.
A team of experts from SSKM Hospital’s Institute of Psychiatry was present when cops interrogated Subhabrata and found his statements incoherent enough to recommend his admission to the
Calcutta Pavlov Hospital in Gobra. Subhabrata, cops said, spoke of “pralay (a violent end to the world)” and a “third world war” in between explaining why he wanted to keep his mother’s remains.
Subhabrata, charged under sections 269 and 176 of the IPC (for a “negligent act likely to spread” infections and hiding information about that act), was taken to the Gobra mental health institute, a route eerily similar to that taken by Partho De, who lived with his sister’s and pet dogs’ rotting bodies at their
Robinson Street mansion for six months before being outed in June 2015.
Cops seek transaction details from bank
Subhabrata’s mother,
Bina Majumdar, died in April 2015 at the age of 84, following which the 46-year-old bought the fridges and air-conditioners and chemicals as he went about trying to keep his mother in a frozen state till 2040.
But cops are not letting go of the financial angle just now. “We have written to the bank to provide us every financial detail about Subhabrata and the pension funds of his dad, Gopal Chandra Majumdar, and mother Bina. We have also asked for all withdrawals to and deposits from these accounts since 2015. We will scrutinise everything and may add more sections, if required, if we are convinced that there was some deliberate financial angle to the crime,” said an investigating officer. Forensic experts would also check for marks on Bina’s thumb to verify the possibility of her thumb impression being misused in financial matters.
Officials said the 89-year-old Gopal had told them about the family’s income. “We now know that Bina got a monthly pension of around Rs 30,000 and Gopal drew Rs 40,000. We also know that it was Subhabrata who was using ATM cards to withdraw money from his parents’ accounts. We are trying to also ascertain the identity of the doctor who issued the life certificate that enabled Subhabrata to go on withdrawing his late mom’s pension,” added the officer.
Subbhabrata kept his calm and cooperated with the police during the interrogation but, every time he heard something pejorative about his mother, he reacted violently. “He spoke to us mostly in English and Russian on Thursday. He had his dinner and breakfast on time. On Friday morning, however, he switched to chaste Bengali to tell us how he thought stem cell research in the city was yet to take off and how medical science in the West would be bringing back the dead to the mortal world,” an investigator said.
Subhabrata recalled in detail how he had initially sent his mother’s body to the Peace Heaven mortuary for a week. He later allowed it to stay there for another week as he arranged for the two giant freezers; the air-conditioners were procured some time later.
“He claimed that the freezers and the chemicals were not easy to procure; he used various leather companies’ names to procure them from suppliers. He wanted to keep one freezer on standby as he feared that maintaining the exact temperature and chemical content was critical,” an official said.
Subhabrata was produced at the Alipore court on Friday and his case was heard around 4.10 pm, the same time when dad Gopal returned from a mortuary after being told that it would be another day before Bina’s body could be returned for cremation.
The cops on Friday denied neighbourhood rumours that Subhabrata had married a cousin and was living on rent in Sarsuna. “So far, we have not found any marriage certificates nor been able to locate this Sarsuna flat. No one has been able to name this cousin,” investigators said.
