1954: When a pregnant live-in partner was butchered, and a Calcutta cop got a cough

The murder of Shraddha Walkar in Delhi and Ujjwal Chakraborty near Kolkata brings back memories of another gruesome killing in Kolkata nearly seven decades ago, that showed a similar pattern. It was one of the first known incidents in India where body parts were scattered to hide a crime.

It was also perhaps the first time in India that the police took the help of a plastic surgeon to put together the body pieces to solve the murder mystery.

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It was January 30, 1954. At the crack of dawn, a municipal cleaner saw three packets wrapped in newspapers outside a toilet near the Keoratala crematorium in Kolkata’s (then Calcutta) Kalighat. There were blood stains and human-finger-like objects were jutting out of the torn edge of a packet. It did not take much of a time for the cleaner to realise what was concealed in the packets tied with coir ropes.

Tollygunge police arrives

Soon a team from Tollygunge police station reached the spot. On opening the packets, they found chopped pieces of two arms — palms, fingers, wrist and forearms. 

In the afternoon, the police were again informed about the recovery of more packets containing human parts. This time, a guard of Kalighat Park discovered the packets in bushes near a mango tree. He got the shock of his life when, out of curiosity, he tore open the newspaper-wrapped packet.

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On reaching the spot, the police found chopped pieces of two legs, the upper portion of a female body, a badly mutilated head with eyes gouged out, and facial skin peeled off in such a manner that the face was unrecognisable.

Another packet contained a full-grown dead foetus. A search of the park led to the discoveries of two more packets containing two chopped portions of thighs. The recoveries, however, did not give the police any lead, except that the victim was an expectant mother.

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A post mortem the next day did not reveal much either, except that the woman had unusually large feet and a cut mark on the left thigh.

Identifying the victim

To trace the killer, the police first needed to identify the victim, whose face was severely damaged. To identify the victim, the police took the help of plastic surgeon Dr Murari Mohan Mukherjee, who was credited with setting up the first independent department of plastic surgery in an Indian hospital.

After the doctor did his job as best as he could with decaying tissues and muscles, the picture of the reconstructed face was circulated in newspapers, seeking the identity of the woman.

Even after almost a month passed, there was no information or any lead. The detective department of Kolkata police that was investigating the crime was totally clueless.

First breakthrough 

Then a streak of luck struck officer-in-charge of the homicide section Samarendra Nath Ghosh, who was heading the probe. 

It was February 25, around 10 pm. Ghosh, down with a cough and cold, was returning home from duty. On the way, to buy cough syrup, he went to a medical store in Tollygunge that was about to down the shutters. To Ghosh’s disgust, the almost empty shop did not have any cough syrup.

“What is the point in keeping the shop open when it does not have any basic medicines? Where is the owner of the shop?” Ghosh asked the shop assistant in exasperation.

Little did he know the answer would help him solve one of the most difficult cases in the history of Kolkata police, which was once known as the ‘Scotland Yard’ of the east.

The man said the owner, one Biren Dutta, had not visited the shop for about a month. It was strange as his employer had never been absent for such a long time, said the shop assistant, adding that there was no word from his end.

The penny drops

As Ghosh returned to his police vehicle and headed home, the conversation started playing on his mind. Curious to know more, he returned to the pharmacy and asked for Dutta’s address. 

It was 55/4/2, Turf Road, not very far from Tollygunge. He immediately rushed to the address, only to find the house locked. Neighbours told the officer that Dutta stayed there with his wife Bela and a six-year-old son. 

A pregnant Bela, Dutta had told his neighbours in January-end, had been admitted to Shishu Mangal Hospital for delivery. But neither Dutta nor his son was spotted by anyone since January 30.

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Inquiry in the hospital further revealed that no one in the name of Bela Dutta had been admitted there in the past month. The information made the police almost sure that they got their man.

Now that they had a name and address, it took just another 24 hours to put together everything they needed to know to track him down. The man had another address on Harish Mukherjee Road in Kalighat, not very far from his address on Turf Road.

On February 27, as he emerged from the house in the early morning, police arrested him. Initially, Dutta denied the crime, saying Bela had eloped with another man. He, however, later confessed his crime, telling the police in great detail why and how he killed his live-in partner.

A dual life that didn’t end well

The couple lived together and even had a son, but were not formally married. Bela, whose real name was Kamala, was a distant relative of Dutta. A few years after the birth of their first son, Dutta married another woman named Meera Basu. It was a formal registered marriage solemnised in 1948. Meera and Bela were unaware of each other’s presence in Dutta’s life.

Dutta, who had a knack for acting, having taken part in theatres and jatras, had successfully led a dual life, dividing his time between the two women. In 1953, Meera also gave birth to a baby boy.

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“He would visit the Turf Road home and have lunch with Bela, while Meera thought her husband’s busy work schedule had led him to have a quick meal at the YMCA canteen. He would spend most nights at the rented room on Harish Mukherjee Road with Meera and their son, while Bela was told that he had to make frequent trips outside Kolkata to purchase consignments of medicines,” recalled Supratim Sarkar, an ADG-ranked police officer of Kolkata police.

The dual life, however, led Dutta to a financial crisis. He was in massive debt. Amidst the crisis, when Bela got pregnant for the second time, Dutta decided it was time to get rid of her.

One night, following a fight, he hacked her to death and then chopped the body into several pieces. Later he dumped the pieces in the crematorium and the park.

On that fateful night, Bela’s son was sleeping in another room. The next morning, Dutta sent him to a neighbour’s place saying his mother had to be rushed to a hospital with labour pain at night. After a day, Dutta took him to his other home, introducing the boy as an orphan to Meera. He told Meera the boy was the only child of his friend, and that both his parents had died in a recent road accident.

On DNA tests and large feet

During the trial, the defence argued that the deceased woman was not Bela and that he had eloped with another man. In the absence of DNA tests, which was first used to solve a crime case in England in 1986, it was not easy to debunk the defence’s claim.

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But the sharp eyes of the investigators and a bit of anthropology helped establish the victim as Bela. The investigators had noticed her father, uncle, brother and sister all had unusually large feet, just as the post-mortem report of the murdered woman had mentioned.

The photograph of Bela’s feet and a tracing of her father’s and uncle’s feet were sent to renowned anthropologist Dr SS Sarkar to indicate whether they were from the same family. Sarkar after scrutiny replied in the affirmative.

From the cut mark on the victim’s left thigh, Bela’s mother also identified the body as that of her daughter, who had sustained the cut when she was eight — it had left a permanent mark on the thigh.

The forensic findings and circumstantial evidence too helped to clinch the case. After examining all these evidences and statements, the court ordered that Dutta be hanged till death.

The Shraddha and Chakraborty cases

Citing the Bela case, the police said it would not be difficult to secure punishment for the killers of Shraddha and retired navy officer Ujjwal Chakraborty.

A non-commissioned officer of the Navy, Chakraborty (55) was allegedly killed by his 50-year old wife and 25-year-old son last week in Baruipur near Kolkata. They cut his body into six pieces with a hacksaw and then dumped it into nearby areas.

Both mother and son were arrested and the body parts and hacksaw were recovered. Police said the duo claimed that the man, an alcoholic, used to regularly torture them.

Shraddha’s body was allegedly cut into more than 30 parts before being disposed of across several areas of Delhi by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala.