Bengal 2020 body chopping case: Death penalty for 7; girl's testimony proved to be vital, says lawyer

KOLKATA: Calling it a “rarest of rare case”, a fasttrack court in Chinsurah in West Bengal on Thursday sentenced seven persons to death in a 2020 murder case, report Dwaipayan Ghosh & Falguni Banerjee. On Oct 11 that year, the criminals killed 23-year-old Bishnu Mal and dismembered his body into six pieces, following animosity created out of a love triangle.

What made judge Shibshankar Ghosh describe it a rare case were the photos of Mal’s body being dismembered that the killers clicked on a mobile phone. They then packed the body parts and dumped them in various places

Police said Mal was in love with a girl and was set to marry her in late Oct 2020. The girl's testimony in the case proved to be the most important for the conviction, special prosecutor Bivas Chatterjee said. The main accused, Bishal Das, and his associates, Ramkrishna Mondal, Raj Kumar Pramanick, Vinod Das, Ratan Bepari, Biplab Biswas, and Rathin Singha, were awarded death sentence.

Another accused, Mantu Ghosh, was jailed for seven years for trying to hide the body, Chatterjee added. Das and his associates had abducted the victim on a motorcycle in front of his house. That night, they killed him in a house in Champdani.

Initially, cops arrested all the criminals except Bishal. The arrested persons led the police to the dumping spots. However, Mal's head was not found then. About a month later, Bishal was apprehended in a shooting incident in Jibantala in South 24 Parganas. He was taken into custody by Chandernagore police.

The plastic-wrapped head was then recovered from a canal in Baidyabati after Bishal was questioned.