Behala: A 46-year-old leather technologist allegedly embalmed and preserved his deceased mother's body and organs in a freezer at home for almost three years before a tip-off by a relative led police to lift the lid on the eerie secret early on Thursday.

Subhabrata Majumdar, who lives in the three-storey Behala house with his father, told investigators that he decided to preserve his mother Bina's body in the hope that he might be able to bring her back to life someday with his "experiments".

He was arrested after being interrogated for several hours and charged with "an act of negligence likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life" and "omission to give information to public servant" under sections 269 and 176 of the Indian Penal Code.

According to a purported death certificate that the police found in the house, Bina died at the age of 87 on April 7, 2015. But nobody apparently knew whether she had been cremated.

The police team that acted on the tip-off not only discovered the body but also a second freezer in the house, this one allegedly meant for Subhabrata's 90-year-old father Gopal Chandra Majumdar."I had asked him to stop this nonsense but he did not listen. He told me that he would not let any of us die. I am not involved in all this," an officer quoted Gopal as saying.

Police sources said comparisons with the 3 Robinson Street case, where Partho De had lived for months with his sister's corpse and the remains of two pet Labradors, would depend on the outcome of the investigation into other possibilities.

Subhabrata, a graduate from the Central Leather Research Institute from Tangra, had been allegedly withdrawing money from his mother's bank account using her debit card. "We have found out that he was using her debit card. An investigation has been initiated on how money was getting credited to her account," Nilanjan Biswas, the deputy commissioner of police (south-west), said.

Investigators have yet to verify if the transactions were from Bina's pension account. She had been an employee of the Food Corporation of India, as was her husband.

The police said Subhabrata had tried his hand at several businesses.

Bina's naked body was found embalmed with chemicals after removing the liver, kidneys and spleen. The removed organs were kept in separate glass canisters with colourful lids in the same freezer. "The body was lying on a cotton bed sheet. Except for some blood marks around her nose and mouth, it was clean," an officer in the homicide wing said.

Subhabrata told the police that he had hired a dom (a person who handles and helps cremate bodies) to stitch up his mother after her organs were removed.

Seized papers, including the death certificate and bills and documents bearing the seal of Balananda Brahmachari Hospital in Behala, suggest that Bina had died of cardiac failure after prolonged illness, the police said.

Subhabrata told the investigators that he had kept his mother's body at the Peace Haven morgue for three weeks before approaching Calcutta Medical College and Hospital for space to preserve the body.

"He said the hospital turned him away and it was then that he decided to preserve the body himself. We have yet to verify everything he has said," an officer said.

Neighbours of the Majumdar family in the SN Chatterjee Road neighbourhood were in shock after news spread of Bina's body being found in the house. "I know that she died a few years ago. She had been bedridden before that. But we didn't know that the body had not been cremated," said a homemaker who used to visit Bina.

Correction

An earlier version of this article had carried a photograph that  was erroneously identified as that of Bina Majumdar. The photograph was actually that of the late Sucheta Sarkar, whose eyes and kidneys were donated to save lives. We apologise to the Sarkar family for hurting their sentiments and misleading our readers on a day Sucheta Sarkar was responsible for an exemplary act with far-reaching consequences. We also apologise to the Majumdar family.