A top businessman, his spouse and their domestic help were stabbed to death inside their house at Vivekananda Palli in Malda Town in the wee hours of Friday. The incident led to tension in the area as local people and members of an association of businessmen put up a roadblock and gheraoed the superintendent of police Arnab Ghosh, demanding arrest of the accused within 72 hours.
They also threatened to go on strike if the accused is not arrested. Without much delay, the state government ordered a probe into the incident monitored by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Police said the deceased businessman Ramratan Agarwal (60) owned some brick kilns in Malda and was one of the top traders in the district. On Friday morning, a local woman found the main gate of the businessman’s house open and entered to find him lying in a pool of blood beside his car in the garage.
Some more people from the neighbourhood rushed into the house hearing the woman’s cry. They found the body of the domestic help Ganesh (34) under the staircase, situated just beside the garage, and the body of Ramratan’s wife Manju Agarwal (55) lying on the staircase.
According to an investigating officer, the nature of the stab wounds on all three bodies was the same, suggesting that the accused had repeatedly stabbed the victims with a sharp weapon to kill them.
“It seems that there was more than one person involved in the crime. The reason being it is not possible for a single person to kill all three of them alone. But the accused was well known to the businessman or else he would not have allowed them to enter his house in the wee hours,” said a police officer.
Police are yet to ascertain the exact reason behind the murders but suspect that an old business rivalry could be the reason. They have not completely ruled out that it could have been a burglary attempt gone awry, but felt that the miscreants had not come just to loot valuables from the house.
Police found that the businessman’s wallet contained a good amount of cash and an expensive mobile phone was found near his body. “It suggests that they didn’t come with an intention of dacoity,” the police officer said, adding that it was a “well planned murder” which was executed after several recces of the house and the surrounding area.
The couple lived by themselves in the house, after their two daughters had gone away married and the younger son went to Kolkata for higher studies. Ganesh was the only person in the house besides from the couple and had been working for the couple for the past several years.
Police brought sniffer dogs to the crime scene in the hopes of identifying the miscreants. There were no surveillance cameras installed inside or outside the businessman’s house. Police are going through the footages of surveillance cameras installed outside the house of another businessman Pranab Singha, situated just opposite the victims’ house.
Singha said that he had passed the area while going for a morning walk, but hadn’t found anything suspicious. Later, while returning, he saw a gathering outside the house and enquired about the incident. He told to the police that he had not come to know anything until Friday morning.