KOLKATA: Six days after the double murder of Susmita Mondal (43) and her 13-year-old son Tamojit at Behala’s Senpally, the detective department on Sunday arrested the woman’s two cousins for killing them and robbing her gold jewellery.
Cops said Susmita’s cousin Sanjay Das (44) had planned and executed the crime. His younger brother Sandip (32) accompanied him to carry out the murders. The Das brothers are residents of Shyampur at Ghoshpara in Maheshtala.They will be produced in a local court on Monday. “We had picked up Sanjay for questioning on Saturday evening. He finally broke down past midnight during questioning. He was arrested at Lalbazar around 2am. His brother was arrested two hours later on Sunday morning from near India Exchange Place,” said joint CP (crime) Murlidhar Sharma.
According to the police, Sanjay had murdered Susmita to rob her gold. The gold, however, is yet to be recovered. “Sanjay was employed at a departmental store in Esplanade as a CCTV maintenance staff. He barely earned Rs 14,000 per month. During the lockdown his salary was reduced, putting him in a financial crisis. The crisis further escalated after he married a widow, whose son (from her first marriage) also had to be married off sometime ago. His son’s marriage left him debt-ridden and he began taking loans from his colleagues and neighbours. About a month-and-a-half ago, the lenders demanded that the borrowed money be paid back. It was around this time that Sanjay contacted Susmita and asked for a loan of Rs 5,000. He requested her not to reveal it to either Susmita’s father or Sanjay’s mother. Susmita assured him that she would arrange the money sometime but she revealed Sanjay’s pleas to Sanjay’s mother. This had upset him,” said a police source.
Sanjay told cops that he had decided to murder Susmita for the gold about a month ago and got his brother Sandip on board about 12 days ago. Three days before the crime, the two brothers had come on a bike and carried out a recce. They finalised the road that they would take to avoid CCTV cameras and also studied that the CCTV in the flat was not working. Last Monday — exactly a week ago — Sanjay told his colleagues that his maternal aunt had died (in reality, she had passed away two-and-half-a-year ago) and skipped office. The accused slashed the woman multiple times with a knife and on hearing his mother’s scream, Tamojit rushed to the spot. Both the victims tried to resist the attack but they were overpowered and killed.
