Suitcase with girl's hacked body found near Kolkata

DURGAPUR/SREERAMPORE: The suitcase containing the hacked body of a six-year-old girl, who along with her mother Sucheta Chakraborty, was allegedly killed by a bank manager, was suspected to have been found by boatmen at Mangal Pandey ghat in Barrackpore around 9.30pm on Sunday.
The boatmen alerted the police who were searching for the body of the child, Dipanjana. "The Serampore police recovered the suitcase and informed the Barrackpore police about it before taking it away.They suspect the body parts belong to the girl," said Barrackpore police commissioner Niraj Kr Singh.
Bank manager Samaresh Sarkar (45), who was caught while dumping the hacked bodies of his 26-year-old lover, Sucheta, and her daughter on Saturday, continues to spin a web of deceit to investigators, apparently to throw them off the track.
A preliminary probe hinted that Sarkar had not taken a train to dispose of the bodies but he had hired a Maruti van to travel from Durgapur to Seoraphuli. The chopper and kitchen knife he claimed to have used was too small to cut bodies into pieces, the police said. Sucheta, a BHU English post-graduate, had told neighbours for five days she felt sleepy, hinting she could have been drugged.
That Sarkar was trying to befuddle the cops became apparent when Durgapur's New Township police questioned the driver of the hired vehicle, in which the bodies were packed in four suitcases, and the driver's brother, the car's helper. Driver Riyazuddin drove the car to Burdwan and his brother, Mirazuddin, drove till Barrackpore's Monirampur ghat. The police were told that around 3.30am on Saturday, a person hired a Maruti van for Kolkata. But Sarkar had been insisting he had taken the bodies by trains. The lie was nailed with the NTS police seizing the car.
The second lie was about the way Sucheta and Dipanjana were killed. Sarkar claimed Sucheta had throttled her daughter before killing herself and he tried to dispose of the bodies to clear his name. A Hooghly police team, with Sarkar, reached Sucheta's house at Bidhan Nagar in Durgapur on Saturday night, to find the place swept clean of possible evidence. But Sarkar had not hidden the chopper and the knife, which he reportedly used to hack the bodies. "Given the size of the weapons, it is improbable he used them," said the police.
"We have urged for his police custody," said Hooghly SP Praveen Tripathy. The Serampore sub-divisional court on Sunday remanded Sarkar in police custody for 12 days. Autopsy of Sucheta's body has been conducted and DNS samples have been sent to Calcutta Medical College.
Sucheta's estranged husband, Shrutidhar Mukherjee, a school teacher, identified her body. "We had no contact since December 2014," he said. Her uncle Prabhat Pathak said, "How can a sane person kill a child and chop her into pieces. He should be hanged." Neighbours said she lived at her father's home since her parents' death.