KOLKATA: In a chilling reminder of Delhi's Shraddha Walkar murder case, a 55-year-old
construction materials supplier
in
Madhyamgram
chopped his wife into six pieces, packed the body parts in a jute bag, immersed it in a canal and then lodged a missing dairy with police on Saturday.
When accosted the next day by his married daughter, who found blood stains on her missing mother's cellphone, he tried to kill himself by consuming poison. Interrogated by cops in hospital, he confessed to the crime. On Tuesday, cops retrieved the dismembered body parts from the Noia canal and placed Nooruddin Mondal under arrest.
Cops said Mondal filed a missing person report for his wife at Madhyamgram police station on Saturday but inconsistencies in his statements raised their suspicion.
Barasat SP Bhaskar Mukherjee said, "Matters escalated when on Sunday Nooruddin Mondal's daughter filed an abduction complaint and Mondal attempted suicide, leading to his hospitalisation." On Monday, Mondal admitted before cops that he had slit his wife's throat, chopped her body, stuffed the parts in a jute bag and dumped it in a canal.
Police suspect the murder was the fallout of a property dispute. Family members have told police that Mondal was pressurising his wife Saira Banu, 50, to hand over a piece of land that she owned.
"My mother owned a three-cottah land and a house at Madhyamgram's Srinagar where I live with my family. But my father was putting pressure on her to give him the property. She paid with her life for refusing," said daughter Mani Bibi.
Neighbours said they didn't find any reason to suspect Mondal. "He joined us and his family members in the search after his wife mysteriously disappeared. We never imagined he could kill his wife so brutally and then remain calm and behave so normally for a couple days," said Kalam Uddin Sheikh, a neighbour.
The police are waiting for Mondal to recover fully to question him further. The retrieved body parts have been sent for postmortem and DNA samples preserved.
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