Air clears over Salt Lake murder, tenant arrested

Kolkata: Within 48 hours of the murder of a retired engineer in Salt Lake, Bidhannagar Police arrested the tenant following a marathon interrogation on Friday.

Investigation revealed that an old rivalry had led to the crime and the accused had murdered the retired engineer as revenge for his insult in front of his family members by the victim a few days ago.

Police said the accused, Sanjay Agarwal, is a tenant of the victim Avijit Nag Chowdhury. He had taken a garage and an office in the house on rent and it was the root cause of the rivalry between them.

Sanjay had taken Rs 42,000 from the victim as loan and recently there was an altercation between them over the same.

The 65-year-old retired engineer was found murdered on the staircase inside his house. There were several injury marks on his body and his throat was slit.

While inspecting the place of crime, police found bloodstains at different places in the house including the garage. Fingerprint experts who were there at the spot found fingerprints on the door. A footprint was also found near the gate of the house.

Police spoke to the victim's son and other relatives and came to know that he used to stay alone in the house. While speaking to the family members, the investigating officers came to know of the victim's rivalry with his tenant.

Police went to Sanjay's house and picked him up for interrogation. They also searched his house and found a shirt with bloodstains.

Initially, during interrogation, Sanjay tried to distract the police and said that he just had an altercation with the victim in connection with a matter related to the rent of the garage and it had almost got resolved.

Sources said that he failed to maintain his stand before the police for a long duration when he was further grilled and confessed.

According to a senior police officer, preliminary investigation revealed that Sanjay went to the house in his car on Wednesday. He parked the vehicle in a narrow lane and went inside with a knife and a blade. He was also carrying a duplicate key.

Sanjay initially didn't find anyone in the house and got disheartened. But he found the victim entering the house when he was leaving the place. The accused took the victim, who was in an inebriated state, inside the house and started beating him up. He slit his throat when the victim fell on the staircase after being beaten up and excessive bleeding led to his death.

On Thursday morning, Sanjay went to his office housed on the ground floor of the victim's residence and created a scene as if Avijit was missing from the day before.

He posed as if he was shocked by Avijit's murder. But investigating officers later went inside the accused's of- fice and found that Sanjay had gone inside his office after committing the murder.

He washed his hands in a basin inside the toilet in his office and also changed his shirt as there were bloodstains on the shirt he was wearing.