Even hours after the murder of Lalita Devi Goenka, her neighbours at Shriniket building, on Ashoka Road, Alipore, were unaware of her fate.

Though she was murdered early on Thursday, and it was first detected by her daughter-in-law Madhu at about 7.15 am, even the people next door did not know about it till 10 am.

“Yahaan itna police kyon hai (Why are there so many policemen here)?” asked one of the neighbours, on seeing cops and mediapersons.

“Somebody has been murdered,” he muttered, before driving off.

Barring a few curious faces peeping from behind the iron grilles of some flats, Thursday was just another day in the highrise.

Children went to school, while men and women hurried to their workplaces. Unlike other neighbourhoods, it was hardly possible to guess that a murder had been committed right there.

“Kya pata kya hua hai (Who knows what has happened),” said another top-floor neighbour, going to drop her son to school.

M. Kejriwal, a fifth-floor resident, came to know about the murder at about 9.30 am, when he went down for a smoke.

“Today, when I went down, I found two or three policemen with a jeep waiting at the gate. I thought that some big businessman must have come with police escort,” Kejriwal said.

“When I returned to my flat for breakfast, my maid told me about the murder. I went down to confirm the news from mediapersons waiting there,’’ he added.

In that apartment block, said Kejriwal, everybody is so busy minding their own business that nobody knows what is happening in the other flats. Nobody knows which servant is working for whom, and who is visiting which flat.

The 10-storeyed building was constructed by Bhagabati Prasad Goenka in 1976. At that time, he was in the construction business.

Of 60 flats in the block, Bhagabati Prasad kept six flats on the ninth and top floor for himself and sold the rest.

He and wife Lalita Devi lived in the combined apartments 10D and 10E. The next-door flat, 10F, was his office. After his death, it was converted into a temple.

According to family sources, meals were cooked every day on the 10th floor, and family members dined together.

On Wednesday evening, too, the family members had dinner at around 8 pm.