Elderly woman’s body found in taxi, three held in West Bengal

KOLKATA: The body of a 60-year-old woman was recovered from a yellow taxi on the Basanti Highway on Friday.
Pragati Maidan cops found the taxi speeding with two passengers on the highway. They stopped it and asked the driver to open the boot. They were shocked to find the woman’s body inside a sack of pumpkin and blood was still oozing out of it. The deceased was identified as Sujamani Gayen, a flower seller at Rashbehari Avenue. Three persons were arrested in connection with the murder. The taxi driver was also detained. The accused are the parents and uncle of the woman’s daughter-in-law, Sujata. “Her mother Malina Mondal, father Basu and maternal uncle Ajay Rang have been nabbed. The role of Sujata and the driver, whose taxi was being used to dump the body, is being probed,” said Murlidhar Sharma, joint CP (crime).
Cops said Sujamani had been invited by Malina to their Arupota residence on Thursday. After lunch, the accused had hit on her head with a stick and then strangulated her after she had fainted. They had planned to dispose of her body in the wee hours of Friday.
During an initial interrogation, Malina told cops that her daughter was being tortured daily at her in-laws’ residence in Haridevpur and that they had wanted to punish her. But later she claimed that the woman was trying to have an illicit affair with Basu.