A man in his sixties was charred to death under mysterious circumstances while his wife was present in their flat at the Man-icktala Housing Complex in the wee hours of Saturday.
A man in his sixties was charred to death under mysterious circumstances while his wife was present in their flat at the Man-icktala Housing Complex in the wee hours of Saturday.
Sutapa Barat (56), the wife of the deceased, Ranjit Kumar Barat (63), a retired official of CESC, has been detained by the police for questioning after she claimed she had no inkling about what happened to her husband in the next room because she was glued to the TV set. The couple’s neighbours, however, accused her of burning her husband to death.
The horror came to light after when some residents of the housing complex found smoke emanating from the second floor flat. They soon informed the fire brigade and the police. The fire brigade found Barat’s charred body lying in a room filled with smoke and rescued Ms Barat from the adjoining room.
The body was sent for post-mortem at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital. Joint commissioner of police (crime) Vishal Garg said the couple’s daughter, who works in Mumbai, was informed.
According to the couple’s neighbours, when they asked Ms Barat soon after the incident about how her husband was charred to death, she claimed that he had committed suicide by setting himself on fire with kerosene and matchsticks in his room while she was watching TV in another.
“She lied to us. There was a scuffle between her and her husband. Later, she set him on fire,” they said, adding that the domestic quarrel was a regular affair in the couple’s flat. Sources revealed that Ms Barat repeated the same claim to the police during her questioning.
In a further twist in the tale, the Maruti car used by the deceased had a police sticker pasted on its windscreen, and a wireless set and two helmets were also found in the vehicle.
