70-year-old woman found living with dead husband for four days

KOLKATA: We asked her when her husband died. She couldn’t say a thing. We suspect she is in deep shock. Her husband probably died about three or four days ago.

A 70- year-old woman was found living with her dead husband for about four days on the southern outskirts of Kolkata, police said on Sunday.

Neighbours alerted the police after they noticed that the old couple at Ostad Amir Khan Sarani was not picking newspapers delivered at their doorstep and there was no response when they knocked on the door.

The neighbours informed Haridevpur police station and officers broke open the door to find the body of 82-year-old Amar Kumar Sanyal on the bed and wife Hasi Rani Sanyal standing nearby with no emotions on her face.

“We asked her when her husband died. She couldn’t say a thing. We suspect she is in deep shock. Her husband, a former employee of Calcutta Dock Labour Board, probably died about three or four days ago. The body has been sent for an autopsy,” an officer said.

The woman has been sent to an asylum in south Kolkata. A POLICE OFFICER

According to the neighbours, they saw the couple on January 8 and nobody visited them, although a nephew used to meet them once in a while long ago.

Kolkata has been haunted by at least two cases of people living with the dead since 2015. Partha De, a 44-year-old man was found to have kept the bodies of his sister and two pet dogs inside his home on 3 Robinson Street, off Park Street, for six months before being discovered by police officers.

In November 2017, a 67-yearold mentally unstable man was found living in a flat in north Kolkata with the decomposed body of his mother.