‘RAW officer got murder idea from novel’

NEW DELHI: Ananya Chakraborty, who killed his family and committed suicide on Saturday, was an avid reader of crime novels and may have borrowed the plot from one, police suspect. They are going over the books picked up from the “depressed” RAW officer’s Sadiq Nagar house and have found that an incident in one of them closely describes Chakraborty’s own brutal crime. “Such brutality and precision in a first-time criminal suggest that he got the idea from books or the net. We are also scanning his internet log. He was armed with two kinds of choppers and a claw hammer, which is not normal. People acting in rage tend to attack with a kitchen knife or some other handy tool,” said a senior officer, adding, “Chakraborty had even snapped his phone line and switched off the mains to prevent the family from seeking help”.After inspecting the crime scene, the forensic team said Chakraborty’s wife and daughter must have thrashed about for help in the dark as they seemed to have been dragged from the bed onto the floor. A panel of three doctors did the postmortems of the bodies at AIIMS on Monday afternoon. Chakraborty’s wife had been battered the most while their adopted daughter, Disha, had the fewest injuries. Their son, Arnab, was killed with a chopper hit on the back of his neck (he was sleeping in a prone position), followed by a hammer blow. Sources said Chakraborty attacked all three victims with the choppers before ensuring their death with the hammer. There are multiple hammer blows on their faces, eyes and foreheads.Disha was just a month old when Chakraborty found her abandoned during rescue operations after the 2001 Bhuj earthquake. Relatives said he was fond of her till the time he started showing behavioural changes. However, he was not on talking terms with Arnab and resented his “disrespectful” behaviour. A prescription issued by a Kolkata hospital in 2009 mentions his strained relationship with the boy. Chakraborty had refused to undergo tests prescribed by doctors. He is said to have pressured his wife to cut all ties with her parents and stopped her from visiting them. The couple quarreled at a wedding recently.The bodies will be cremated on Tuesday.