A mentally-challenged elderly woman was on Monday found living with the corpse of her 38-year-old daughter in their house in the southern part of the city's Bijoygarh area, a senior police officer said.
Policemen from Jadavpur Police Station reached the place after a food delivery boy complained of a foul smell coming out of the flat on the second floor of the residential building in the Bijoygarh area, he said.
Breaking open the doors, policemen found the elderly woman identified as Dipali Basu (68) sitting beside the corpse of her daughter Sanchita Basu (38), he added.
"The woman was living with her mother and both were having some kind of mental disorder. We realised that the mother never told anybody about her daughter's death. The neighbours informed the police after a food delivery boy raised an alarm after sensing the foul smell coming out of the flat," the IPS officer said.
Initial probe revealed that the mother-daughter duo had no source of income and one of their relatives used to send them food, he added.
"It seems that the daughter died 2-3 days ago," he said, adding that police removed the body to SSKM hospital for post-mortem and other legal formalities.
The incident brought back memories of the Robinson Street case, in which software engineer Partha De had spent six months with the skeletons of his sister Debjani De and two pet dogs. Police stumbled upon the case while investigating the death of his father Arabinda De, who had set himself on fire on June 10, 2015.
Published 24 April 2023, 17:15 IST