File picture of Mridula Moitra (left), a sniffer dog outside the Moitras’ home in Jadavpur. (Bishwarup Dutta)

Calcutta, Dec. 5: An elderly businessman and his wife were found murdered, the bodies bearing stab wounds, in the garage of their Jadavpur home last night.

The bodies of 72-year-old Kalyan Moitra and 65-year-old Mridula were spotted by their son-in-law, Dipanjan Bhattacharya, who came to check on them after phone calls to their Sree Colony residence went unanswered since Thursday night.

After speaking to neighbours, police have begun looking for the couple’s driver Bapi, who was sacked before Durga Puja because of his “irregular attendance’’ and “frequent demands for cash’’.

“At times while going to the market, Mriduladi used to tell us that their driver was not doing his job properly and did not come to work regularly. She would say the driver often demanded money as loan. He would tell them that he had very little left at the end of each month. He was angry when he was refused a loan before being sacked and so could have been seeking revenge. So, this driver should be traced and interrogated,” said Sunil Sen, a Sree Colony resident.

Other neighbours said the couple didn’t mingle much in the locality after their son’s death and were “good, gentle people’’. They never picked fights with other residents.

The police have registered a case of murder. Fingerprint experts visited the house today. Sniffer dogs were also brought.

“We have initiated a murder case. It appears that the two were stabbed several times. They were possibly murdered late on Thursday night. But we have not found the weapon used. We are trying to find out if cash or valuables were stolen,” said South 24-Parganas additional superintendent of police (industrial) S.K. Chaudhury.

“Our men are trying to locate the driver whose services were dispensed with before the pujas. Someone known to the couple could be involved in the murder. Maybe, the couple had allowed somebody to enter their residence because he or she was known to them,” Chaudhury said.

The police said Kalyan, in the business of selling CDs, and Mridula, who worked in a private clinic, had been residents of Sree Colony in Jadavpur for almost 20 years.

Their son died in a road accident four years ago and daughter Poonam Bhattacharya and son-in-law Dipanjan stay in the Central Park area of Jadavpur.

When Poonam’s repeated phonecalls to her parents went unattended, Dipanjan contacted a relative, Partha Banerjee, last night because he had another set of keys to the Moitras’ home.

“After getting the keys, Dipanjan went to the house around 11pm yesterday. Before taking the stairs to the mezzanine floor where the couple stayed — it was the only floor occupied in the three-storey house — Dipanjan peeped into the garage through the mail box slit to see why the lights were on there when the entire building was in darkness,” said Ranjit Bhattacharya, a neighbour who accompanied him. “He saw the bodies then.”