Promoter Snehangshu Rakshit claimed to have received threat calls on his cellphone a few days before his death

A Kasba realtor missing for the past three days was found murdered in Sonarpur, on the southern fringes of the city, on Friday morning.

The body of Snehangshu Rakshit, 52, was wrapped in a bedsheet when the residents of Khodahati spotted it floating in a pond around 11am.

The spot was two-and-a-half km from a plot that Rakshit and two other promoters, Pradip Ghosh and Tushar Lodh, had recently bought.

Ghosh and Lodh have been detained, along with a Sonarpur youth, Sona, who knew Rakshit and had his phone number. “Sona was passing by the pond on a bicycle when the body was spotted. He identified the deceased and later informed Rakshit’s family about the murder,” said an officer on the case.

The police said the body did not bear any injury marks, though there were blood stains on the mouth and nose.

“We are yet to unearth the motive behind the murder,” said Praveen Kumar, the superintendent of police (South 24-Parganas). “An examination of the body revealed that the killers did not use any sharp weapons or firearms.”

“We suspect Rakshit was murdered somewhere else and the body was later dumped in the pond,” said an officer of Kasba police station.

Family members told the police that Rakshit had received threat calls a few days ago, prompting him to keep his mobile phone switched off most of the time.

Rakshit last left home around 1pm on Tuesday. When he failed to return even the next morning, the family lodged a missing persons diary with Kasba police station.

“After returning home from the police station, we got a call from the New Market branch of a private bank. The caller asked for my father, saying he was scheduled to visit the bank on Wednesday. We learnt from him that my father was in the bank till 4pm the previous day,” said Rakshit’s elder son Satyaki.

Thereafter, whenever the family tried to call Rakshit, a recorded message said the phone was either switched off or not reachable.

Kumar said the police would look into the threat calls Rakshit had talked about. “We will also try to find out whether the murder was linked to any dispute related to Rakshit’s family property.”