(Top) The children speak to a police official; (below) a wedding picture of Somnath and Arpita Das. Picture by Rana Ghosh

Durgapur, Nov. 7: A seven-year-old girl who found her mother dead, head battered and wrists slashed, today told police that her father committed the murder after a quarrel, which she spied through the crack in the door.

On the basis of the girl’s statement, Durgapur police today arrested 39-year-old Somnath Das, the father who works with Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd.

Sonia (name changed), her three-year-old brother and mother Arpita were asleep when Somnath came home with a woman, the girl told the police.

“The girl told us that she suddenly woke up hearing voices around 2.30am. She tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. Her father was quarrelling with her mother in the drawing room with an unknown woman was standing,” Kalyan Mukherjee, the sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of Durgapur, said.

After sometime, the three went to another room that Sonia could not peep through, but continued to quarrel, she said.

Soon, her mother was shouting for help. “But I was scared to go out,” Sonia said. “I stood in my room shivering. In a few minutes, my mother was groaning, as if in great pain. Then she fell silent,” the girl told the police.

“A little later, I saw my father and the woman walking out of the room and heading for ours. I was scared. I ran to bed and hid under the sheets feigning sleep. My brother did not wake up,” the police quoted her as saying.

After Somnath and the woman left the house, Sonia went to the next room. She said she found her mother lying in a pool of blood. In tears, she ran to neighbour Tapan Chakraborty’s house.

Chakraborty said he saw Arpita lying with her wrists slashed and her head smashed.

He called the police immediately. “We know the family for seven years now. Last night, the girl came to me crying and said that her father had killed her mother,” Chakraborty told the police, who filed an FIR on their own.

Chakraborty said: “Somnath used to come home on weekends. Of late, the couple had been quarrelling. Recently, Somnath had stopped coming home on weekends.”

Sonia told the police she was surprised to see her father returning home so early on a Friday, when he normally comes on Saturdays.

Arpita, 34, who was married to Somnath 11 years ago, used to run a gym in a portion of the house earlier.

After consulting the police, one of the neighbours called up Somnath on his cellphone and told him Arpita had committed suicide so he should come home as soon as possible.

“The neighbours asked Somnath to come by bus and told him they would wait at the DVC More bus stop. As soon as he got off the bus around 2.30pm, he was arrested” SDPO Mukherjee said.

“Somnath has denied murdering his wife. He has said he was in Calcutta when his wife committed suicide. But Arpita was hit with a blunt object on the head, throttled and her wrists were slashed. We have arrested Somnath on the basis of his daughter’s statement. We are looking for the woman.”

The children have been sent to Arpita’s parents in Birbhum.

Shekhar Basu, a criminal lawyer in Calcutta, said the statement of the girl, who is a minor, could be accepted in court after a judge questions her. “The trial judge will question the girl. If he finds the statement rational and logical, he will accept it,” said Basu.