KOLKATA: A couple in their 50s were found brutally murdered at their ground-floor apartment on Harish Mukherjee Road in Bhowanipore, south Kolkata, on Monday evening, the sheer violence and impunity of the crime sending shockwaves through the upper middle-class residential neighbourhood.
Initial impressions by the investigating team were that the couple — Asoke J Shah (56) and his wife Rashmita (52) — were murdered as they tried to prevent a robbery, or fight off the robbers. The apartment was ransacked, items of jewellery were missing, and an almirah and locker were found broken. The cops are exploring other angles as well. Each of them had multiple wounds on their bodies, said police sources. They are also investigating whether the couple had let in their murderers (there could be more than one), which could indicate that they knew their would-be assailants.
The Shahs stayed in the apartment with their unmarried youngest daughter. Their two eldest daughters, both married, stay elsewhere. It was this youngest daughter who found her parents in the evening. She had left for work in the morning, but came back after neither of her parents was answering phone calls.
Local councillor Kajari Banerjee, who visited the crime scene in the evening after the bodies were discovered, said the couple were long-time residents of 73B Harish Mukherjee Road. Asoke invested in the stock-market, his main source of income since he wound up his business of torch-manufacturing and -sales around five years back.
Sources close to the investigation said the murderers had broken the almirah and the locker and ransacked the entire ground-floor apartment of the well-maintained but old G+3 building. The victims’ kin have reported as missing several rings and necklaces that the couple always wore. The only thing left untouched was a plate of food on the dining table and a television set, which was still running when their bodies were discovered. Everything so far supported the “murder for gain” theory, the cops said.
