New Delhi (Sputnik): A man from India's eastern city of Kolkata was arrested by the police on Wednesday night after the dead body of his mother was recovered from a freezer in his apartment.
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Subhabrata Majumdar's mother Bina reportedly died on April 7, 2015, while undergoing treatment at a private nursing home but instead of cremating the body, Majumdar took it home and applied "mummification" techniques to preserve the body in a commercial freezer, police told the media. Majumdar's father Gopal, who also lives in the same house, is also being questioned.
"Subhabrata Majumdar used a debit card to withdraw cash from the pensioner's account of his mother. We are investigating why the bank kept the pension account alive for the past three years without a life certificate," Nilanjan Biswas of Kolkata Police told reporters.
Another official from the Kolkata police force told Sputnik that Majumdar had used formaldehyde to mummify his mother's body.
"He had removed the internal organs from the body of his mother. The body was preserved using chemicals like formaldehyde," the official told Sputnik on the condition of anonymity.
Majumdar's mother was an employee of the state-owned Food Corporation of India (FCI) and entitled to the pension after retiring.