A homemaker was murdered in Lake Town on Friday evening by someone who police suspect had entered the apartment in the guise of a priest.
Madhu Jain, 57, was found lifeless around 6.30pm next to a floor mat and puja utensils in her second-floor flat.
Madhu's husband Devendra, a share trader, has lodged a complaint with Lake Town police station, alleging that jewellery worth Rs 10 lakh was missing from the apartment.
"Evidence (puja utensils) suggests that someone who knew about the rituals the woman would perform and her beliefs was behind the murder," said an officer of Lake Town police station.
Both daughters of the couple are married - one lives in Bangalore and the other a few houses away in Lake Town.
"I came to know about the murder around 6.30pm from one of my mother's neighbours," said Swati, the daughter settled in Lake Town.
Bidhannagar police commissioner Jawed Shamim, who visited the apartment, said: "Circumstantial evidence found in the apartment suggests Madhu Jain knew the person who had entered the apartment. Sweets and milk were found in the room where arrangements for a puja had been made."
Shamim said the woman was possibly smothered as there were no marks of injury or signs of resistance.
The top cop said the G+4 building, barely a kilometre from Lake Town police station, did not have closed-circuit TV cameras.
The caretaker of the building, Sishir Biswas, was being questioned till late on Friday. Biswas had earlier told Metro that he might have been in a nearby market when the homemaker was killed.
According to police, the murder was detected after a washerman had come to deliver clothes. Jain was lying dead in the living room.
"The washerman pressed the doorbell but no one responded. He then went to the third floor and left her clothes there. A resident of the third-floor apartment came down looking for Madhu a while later. The door was shut but not locked. When Madhu didn't respond, the neighbour called the caretaker," the police said.
Biswas said he pushed the door and opened it. "The lady was lying on her back," he told this newspaper.
"We are yet to ascertain how many people were involved in the murder," a police officer said.
"It appears the woman was killed between noon and 4pm. What has surprised us is that the killer(s) entered the housing complex and left with the booty without being noticed by the caretaker."
Police sources said the cell phone number of the deceased was sent to the service provider for its call details.
"If the killer was known to Madhu, he might have called her before turning up at her apartment. The call records will be crucial to the probe," the police said.
The murder is yet another pointer to the growing lawlessness in the city.
Two retired college teachers were found murdered in their apartment in Paikpara last July. The couple's former domestic help was arrested in this connection.
In January last year, a 78-year-old woman had been murdered in her Rashbehari Avenue apartment.
Last week, a woman in her forties had foiled an attempted robbery at her Beleghata flat. Four men had come to Chanda Agarwal's apartment posing as employees of a cable TV company. Chanda's husband was at work and the couple's son Keshaw, a Class II student, was at DPS Newtown.
Over the past three weeks, there have been at least three robberies involving armed gangs in the city and on the fringes.
Early on February 7, a gang of seven had broken into a house in the Adarshpally neighbourhood of Belghoria. The robbers threatened the women of the house with a dagger.
The gang had also assaulted the youngest member of the family - a nine-year-old child who had lost her father three months ago.
She had pleaded with the men to spare their home, saying her family didn't have the resources to rebuild it.
On February 8, four armed men had barged into an office in a congested Burrabazar locality and snatched Rs 2.5 lakh.
The next day, a gang broke into the house of a dentist in Naktala when his elderly parents-in-law were watching television around 8pm and took away cash and valuables.
