Salt Lake citizens die unattended at home

KOLKATA: Locked in and without any help, two persons were found dead at their homes—one in Salt Lake and the other at Sukantanagar—on Wednesday. Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation mayor Krishna Chakraborty asked all the councillors in the township to prepare a list of the elderly and ailing people living alone in the area and to check on them every day.
“It’s a scary situation with domestic helps and neighbours not being able to pay visits during the lockdown. This has rendered the elderly and the ailing completely helpless. On learning about the two deaths, I have asked all my councillors to make a list of such persons in their wards and either send their representatives or personally check on them,” Chakraborty said.
On Wednesday morning, officers of Bidhannagar North police station received a call from an AD Block resident about a stench coming from a house. “On reaching the two-storey AD 322, we found a 40-year-old man, Sourav Mukherjee, lying dead on a sofa on the first floor and her sister crying beside him,” said an officer. A source said, Mukherjee had been diabetic since he was small and that the two siblings used to undergo psychological treatment. Mukherjee had suffered cerebral attack eight months ago and since then, mostly stayed at home. Neither of them was employed and they survived on the savings of their father, who was a renowned doctor. Both their parents had died in short intervals, source said. A family friend would occasionally check on them but he could not visit them for almost a month, ever since the novel coronavirus pandemic. “Eleven days ago, a neighbour informed me the man was ill and needed medical attention. We called one of their relatives in Salt Lake, who I thought, had admitted him to hospital. But now, I found out that they tried to admit him to three hospitals but later took him back home,” said local councillor Anindya Chatterjee.
Cops said they had sent the body for post-mortem.
At Sukantanagar, also under Bidhannagar civic body, a 70-year-old former Reserve Bank of India official, who used to live alone at his flat, was found dead in his bathroom. His body, too, had started decomposing, with cops suspecting he died at least 36 hours ago. Police said Narayan Chandra Mondal was a divorcee and lived alone, while his daughter lived abroad. His brother, who lives in Habra, last spoke to him on March 30 and could not contact him since then. The brother had asked the domestic help, who had stopped coming to work since the lockdown, to check on him.
“The help came to the flat but found it locked from inside. Alerted by locals, we broke open the door to find the man lying dead in the bathroom,” said a senior Bidhannagar city police officer.