Samar Mukherjee

Calcutta, June 8: A 62-year-old retired officer of the Bengal electricity board hanged himself at his Behala home after allegedly being harassed by police for defaulting on loan repayment to a private bank.

The family of Samar Mukherjee claimed that a group of policemen went to his home at 3am on Sunday but Behala police sources insisted that the visit took place “sometime on Saturday evening”.

Mukherjee’s family had not filed a written complaint till late tonight but the police said they would probe the cause of his death.

“My father-in-law committed suicide as the police harassed him,” said Swati, Mukherjee’s daughter-in-law.

“As far as I know, there was an arrest warrant against Mukherjee. We are inquiring into the cause of his death,” said Praveen Kumar, the superintendent of police, South 24-Parganas.

According to Swati, a schoolteacher, five policemen went to the Mukherjee residence around 3am. “They asked him to go to the police station, claiming there was an arrest warrant against him. They left after we protested but, by that time, they had terrorised my father-in-law,” Swati said.

After spending some time in the prayer room, Mukherjee went to the toilet but did not come out even after 20 minutes. “The door of the toilet was not locked. I just pushed it to see whether he was all right. I saw he was hanging from the ceiling with a nylon rope around his neck,” she added.

Mukherjee, who retired as a communications officer from the state electricity board in 2006, lived in the family’s two-storeyed house with wife Sandhya, son Biswanath and Swati. He had a monthly pension of Rs 7,000.

Swati said Mukherjee had taken a personal loan of Rs 32,000 from the private bank. “He had failed on some EMIs. The bank had sent recovery agents but in April 2005, he paid Rs 36,510, including interest, and cleared the dues by cheque.”

The family did not furnish any debt clearance document but produced a bank passbook that showed Rs 36,510 had been withdrawn on May 5, 2005. “The money was used to clear the dues,” said Swati.

She alleged that a policeman had taken a bribe of Rs 3,000 from Mukherjee in 2006 citing a warrant over a bounced cheque. But the police said they had never gone to the family’s house before yesterday.