Kolkata woman's body chemically preserved to draw pension

The Kolkata Police has recovered the body of an old woman from a freezer and well preserved for about three years using chemicals, suspectedly by her jobless son to cash in her pension by taking her thumb impression.

The bizzare episode was discovered at a residence in the southern part of the city's Behala area. The body of Beena Majumdar was recovered from inside a freezer, meant to keep meat, a senior police officer said today.

Her son Subhabrata Majumdar, in his early 50s, has been detained and the police was questioning him and the woman's husband, octogenarian Gopal Chandra Majumdar, he said.

The police began a search for the woman after receiving a call yesterday from a journalist, who had gone to the locality to squeeze out a story when area residents alerted him sensing something was wrong with the Majumdar family.

The neighbours knew the woman had died at a private hospital but were clueless about what happened to her body.

The police officer said the woman died nearly three years ago and her body was preserved inside a huge freezer in a locked room on the ground floor of the two-storeyed building.

There were two freezers in the locked room.

The body of the woman was kept in one of the freezers, while the other was empty, the officer said, adding "we are looking for what purpose the second freezer was there."