Designer Sharbari Dutta died of cerebral stroke, no foul play involved: Kolkata Police

KOLKATA: Eminent fashion designer Sharbari Dutta died due to cerebral stroke and there was no foul play involved, a senior police officer said on Friday, following the arrival of her postmortem report.

The 63-year-old designer, revered in the fashion industry for revolutionising men's wear, was found dead in the bathroom of her south Kolkata residence on Thursday evening.

"Dutta's post-mortem report has revealed that she died due to cardiac arrest; it is not a case of homicide," the senior officer told PTI.

Asked about the mark on her left ankle, he said it was due to a minor injury she had sustained, but that had got nothing to do with her death.

"It could be a mark of an injury which she had recently suffered. It has no connection with her death," the officer added.

Earlier, the designer's family physician had attributed her death to cardiac arrest.

As Dutta was found lying dead in the bathroom, family members, on the advice of the doctor, informed the police.

A case of unnatural death was subsequently registered and Dutta's body sent for postmortem.

According to her son Amalin Dutta, she was not seen at her residence all Thursday, and family members assumed he had gone out for work.

"I had last seen my mother on Wednesday. I didn't see her all Thursday. I thought she was busy and had gone out for work. Both of us usually stayed busy and we didn't get to meet each other every day. Later, on Thursday, I found her body in the bathroom," Amalin, also a fashion designer, said.

Dutta, the daughter of Bengali poet Ajit Dutta, made her mark in the fashion industry with her unique blend of traditional and contemporary art on fabric.

She had draped personalities cutting across professions, be it Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly or actor Prosenjit Chatterjee and singer-composer Anupam Roy.

She had launched her brand 'Shunyaa', which has several outlets in Kolkata.

The showbiz fraternity expressed shock over her death.