Prapti and her mother

Howrah, Feb. 26: A woman and her eight-year-old daughter were found murdered with a bonti and a pillow in their bedroom this evening, with the TV left on.

Srabonti Ghosh, 27, lay on the floor with her throat slit, next to Prapti who had been suffocated with the pillow. The bloodstained bonti and a pair of rubber surgical gloves lay beside the bodies.

The door of the two-bedroom house at the Government of India Press colony here was shut loosely. Srabonti’s husband Partha, 35, was in his office at 50 J.L. Nehru Road, Chowringhee, police said.

“There were no signs of struggle, so the killers must have been familiar faces,” an officer of Jagacha police station said, adding that the police were clueless about the motive.

Some neighbours said they saw a woman, who lives nearby, arrive at the house in the afternoon and argue loudly with Srabonti. “We will interrogate her soon,” the officer said.

Partha, a team leader with Ismart Global Pvt Ltd, a BPO, said: “I got a call in office around 5.30pm telling me there was some problem at home. I rushed here with a colleague… to be greeted by devastating news.”

Five people lived in the house but Partha’s parents had gone to Mumbai on a holiday. It was next-door neighbour Deepali Bhattacharya who found the bodies, around 5.20pm.

“The room was dark but the TV was on. In the flickering light of the screen, I could make out that mother and daughter were lying on the floor. Then I froze — there was blood all over,” said Deepali, who has been fainting off and on.

Neighbours said the afternoon visitor had arrived around 1.30. “She lives outside the colony. Her husband often came to the Ghoshes’ home but I never saw her here before,” Malin Roy said.

“We heard angry voices but could not make out what the quarrel was about. She left the house in a huff after half an hour.”

The last time anyone in the colony saw Srabonti alive was 10.30 in the morning.

“She told me her daughter was running a temperature and had to miss school,” Deepali said. Prapti was a Class II student at the nearby Nabokishalaya Vidyalaya.

“When Srabonti failed to turn up for our neighbourhood evening adda, I decided to find out if Prapti’s condition had worsened.”

The police believe there was more than one killer. “Fingerprint experts will soon come and take samples,” said Milan Kanta Das, additional superintendent of police, Howrah.

The bodies have been sent for post-mortem.