The details of the case look straight from a Bollywood crime thriller.
Three years ago, an 81-year-old lady Bina Majumdar died in a private nursing home in Kolkata.
On Wednesday night last week, Kolkata police raided the deceased’s house and found her mummified body stored in a commercial refrigerator. According to police, Bina’s 46-year-old son Subhabrata Majumdar had kept his mother’s corpse stored in a high-end refrigerator.
So far, Police has failed to ascribe any motive to Subhabrata’s act. However, they have been able to get multiple leads. It has also come to fore that Subhabrata continuously withdrew his mother’s monthly pension since last three years.
Women stand outside the house in India where 46-year-old Subhabrata Majumdar kept his mother’s body in a freezer for three years | Photo: AP
A Times of India report said the leather technology graduate is being treated for mental illness at Pavlov Hospital.
How did police come to know?
According to a Hindustan Times report, the Majumdars didn’t gel much with their neighbours. After Bina’s death, Subhabrata lived with his ailing father in the two-floor house. The suspicions grew when the high-tonnage refrigeration system was installed in the vacant first floor of the house.
Police said the neighbours found it unusual after the high-tech cooling equipment kept running all day and night.
Living with a dead body
Kolkata police has also questioned Subhabrata’s father Gopal Majumdar but he has been let free owing to his poor health.
According to police, Subhabrata had removed the internal organs from his mother’s body for preservation by using chemicals like formaldehyde.
The TOI report said the deceased’s body was preserved at a constant temperature of -96 degrees Celsius. Preliminary investigations have suggested that Subhabrata was planning to preserve it for 25 years.
The man who loved cryoprotection
During his psychiatric analysis, Kolkata Police found Subhabrata had symptoms of hallucination, delusion and schizophrenia. The police has also come to know that the accused was a keen student of Cryoprotection.
Representational Image | Source: Financial Express
According to Oxford dictionary, cryoprotection is: Protection (typically of living tissues or organs) against damage when the temperature falls below freezing, especially through the action of cryoprotectants.
In Bina’s case, police suspects Subhabrata used formaldehyde as a cryoprotectant.
The investigations
After his arrest, a local court granted bail to Subhabrata last week. Currently, he’s undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital.
Police is looking at the case from different angles. According to the TOI report, the police is looking into the purchase of two high-tech commercial refrigerators by Subhabrata to preserve his mother’s body.
The incisions made on the body of the deceased are surgically precise, prompting the police to suspect that Subhabrata might not be the lone suspect.
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