The body of a man in his fifties was found stuffed inside a trolley bag that was dumped near a drain in New Town.
The body was found behind Karigori Bhavan, around 2km from the Unitech bus stop on Major Arterial Road, on Saturday morning.
A senior officer of Bidhannagar commissionerate said the man had been identified as Subodh Sarkar, who lived in a rented accommodation at Belgharia on the northern fringes of Kolkata.
On Saturday morning, passersby and a couple of van pullers spotted blood oozing out of a bag that was dumped near the drain.
They immediately alerted police.
Teams from Techno City and New Town police stations reached the spot.
The police said the bag’s main compartment was locked. They broke the lock and found the body stuffed inside.
”We saw blood on the bag and there was a slight stench emanating from it,” said a police officer who was at the spot.
New Town deputy commissioner of police Manav Singhal said Sarkar had an injury on the head.
“We have started a murder probe. Preliminary investigations have suggested that the body was dumped shortly after Sarkar was killed. We are questioning two persons in connection with this case,” Singhal said.
Another senior officer of Bidhannagar commissionerate said that Sarkar had moved into his rented accommodation in Belgharia around 3 months ago.
Sarkar told his landlord that he used to own a printing press in Bhubaneswar
(Odisha) and had spent most of his life there, the officer added.
“While taking the house on rent, Sarkar told his landlord that he had wound up his business in Bhubaneswar and was looking to settle here. A woman, who claimed to be a relative of Sarkar, also used to stay with him,” said the officer.
Hours after the body was found, the police detained a man from Patashpur in East Midnapore, around 150km from Kolkata, the police officer said.
The man and the woman, who used to stay with Sarkar, were being questioned till late on Saturday.
No arrest had been made in the case till late on Saturday.
Sarkar’s body was sent to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem to ascertain the exact cause and time of his death. The police are also scanning CCTV footage in the area.
A senior officer of Bidhannagar Commissionerate said they had alerted all police stations in the state after the body was recovered.
Sometime later, the police received an alert from Patashpur that the driver of a cab had stopped near one of the police checkposts and told the cops that the male passenger
inside his car had hired him to take him to the city and then to New Town where he dumped a trolley bag in a deserted area.
“They detained the passenger immediately,” said Badana Varun Chandra Sekhar, the joint commissioner, headquarters, Bidhannagar commissionerate.
