Visit to police stn, morgue leaves dad exhausted

KOLKATA: As

Subhabrata Majumdar

was taken away by the police on Thursday, 89-year-old Gopal Chandra Majumdar for the first time spent the night completely alone at home without his family, left to reconcile to the hard reality that his son had cut open his late wife’s body, removed the innards and then sewn it up to preserve it and that he required psychiatric help. A few relatives offered to be with him but the retired deputy manager at

Food Corporation of India

said he would be able to manage on his own.

The police, however, deployed two cops at the house gate and the Behala police station duty officer kept asking after him at regular intervals.

Majumdar expressed one wish: he wanted to finally give his wife, Bina (84), a “proper send-off” by cremating her, three years after her death. But on Friday, he realized what it would take to fulfil his wish. Early in the morning, Majumdar’s relative Ruma Chakraborty, along with her husband and a cousin, arrived at the Behala house to accompany him to the police station and then, the police morgue at Katapukur, where Bina’s body was being kept. Majumdar’s health failing and age taking a toll, the elderly man had to go through an arduous day, making the rounds of the police station and the morgue, surviving only on breakfast till he could have tea and biscuit late in the afternoon.

First, they visited the Behala police station, which accepted Majumdar’s application for his wife’s body, around 1.30pm and forwarded it to the morgue. “We did whatever little we could to help him. We do need to ask him some important questions, some of them about the family’s finances, but we are in no hurry,” said an officer. He added Majumdar’s words on the family’s financial status helped them draft a questionnaire to the nationalized bank, asking it for details of Subhabrata’s finances.

At the morgue, Majumdar had to wait for three hours only to be told the body could not be handed over on Friday. “The doctors are studying the body in detail to learn how it was preserved so well. All five vital organs were taken out and the body was again sewn up but the entire body was intact. The doctors are studying some marks on her hands and fingers to check the cause,” said a cop. Majumdar’s relative Chakraborty said they were disappointed to be turned away. “We had prepared ourselves to finish the cremation today itself. Police have asked us to return on Saturday,” she said.

By the time Majumdar got to return home around 5.30pm, he could barely walk any more. Leaning on his stick and holding on to a relative, he could be heard saying, “Ei boishe ar parchi na(I can’t manage it any more at this age).” He and the relatives took a break at

Roy Bahadur Road

stall, barely 500m from his house, where they had tea and biscuits around 4.30pm.

Earlier in the morning, before Majumdar had left his home on James Long Sarani, he claimed he was not aware of what his son was exactly up to. “Subhabrata said Bina would live again. After her death, he said they were taking her to the Peace Haven morgue,” Majumdar told TOI. “My son told me never to go to the ground floor.” He differed from what he told cops and media on Thursday when he claimed his son had convinced him his late wife would be revived and that he had little option but to go along with him. On Friday, he mentioned his son told him to read up on human anatomy and cells. “I did,” he said.