Decomposed body found in house with nine residents

KOLKATA: A 71-year-old woman, who stayed alone on the first floor of her Lake Avenue house, was found dead on Wednesday morning. Her body was recovered in a decomposed condition. Cops said the victim, Kalpana Das, died at least 24 hours before her body was discovered though eight members of her extended family stayed in the same house, police said.

"We have not found anything suspicious. We are, however, carrying out a post-mortem to ascertain there was no foul play. The circumstances of her death, though, has left some relevant questions on how the modern society is treating its senior citizens as a burden," said an officer from the Tollygunge police station. The victim was also enrolled in Pronam, a police programme, for the elderly for the past five years.

Kalpana lost her husband, businessman Niranjan Das, about six years ago. The couple had no children. With time, she got confined to her first-floor residence even as she depended on the local police to help her out.

S R Das, a relative who lives in the same building and whom TOI spoke to, said Kalpana was "mentally disturbed".

"We hardly spoke. We got a foul smell on Tuesday night and thought a rat had died. But the smell became unbearable on Wednesday morning making us wonder if it was something else. We called up her nephew, who confirmed that Das had not stepped out of house. It is then that we decided to callthe police around 10 am," said the relative.

The cops said they are going to cite this case in their Pronam meetings in Lalbazar. "There are certain lessons to be learnt from this incident and we will try and chalk out ways in which we can stand by elders living all alone in this city," said an officer from south division.