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History is a word that hangs
over the residence of Patna University
Professor, Papiya Ghosh like an old curse.
She used to teach the
subject and a book on Partition, authored by
her, was slated for a January release. In
all, a serene academic life that seemed to
hold nothing that could have provoked her
brutal murder last fortnight.
Eight stab wounds, eyes
gouged-out, a burgled house.
On the surface, the sort of
violent crime that chooses its victims at
random, save for the usual criterion: she
was a 53-year-old woman, well off and living
alone.
But scattered in the debris
of Papiya’s life are strange clues that
point back in time. To a personal history
almost as old as the subject of her book.
She was killed on the same
day her father, Bihar bureaucrat Ujjal Kumar
Ghosh, was killed nearly 50 years ago.
Was it just an uncanny
coincidence, or is there a connection to
that older, as-yet “unsolved murder”. An old
enmity that still lingers? How come no one ,
not even those manning the police station
500 yards away from her house, heard a sound
that night? And why did her dogs — the two
fiercely protective Pomeranians — not bark?
There was no sign of a forced entry, so was
it someone she knew?
The other facts too don’t
add up. If it was a simple burglary gone
wrong, why the brutality-the multiple stabs,
the gouging out of the eyes, other stray
signs of sadism? If it was a land shark
getting rid of a feisty, middle-aged
academician to grab her prime property, why
was the house cleaned out-down to the gas
cylinder? How was all the loot carried-it
could not have fitted into the small Maruti
800 which, too, was taken away from the
garage?
Even the hard disk
containing the last two volumes of her
yet-to-be published work are missing. The
questions are swirling around in the
isolated bungalow No. 168 in Patna’s posh
Pataliputra Colony where she lived with her
elderly maid Malti Devi, who too was killed.
(The maid’s two grandsons, who lived in the
same house, were away that night.) Now, a
week or so after that gruesome wintry night,
it is being talked about as a “dead-end”
case.
On January 1, 2007, when
Routledge releases Papiya’s book Partition
and The South Asian Diaspora _ Extending the
Subcontinent’ at IIC, sister Tuktuk Ghosh
wants to keep the occasion quiet. For Tuktuk,
a senior West Bengal cadre IAS officer, it
is a double burden: the burden of being part
of the ‘system’ and being patient enough to
leave it to its meandering ways.
Tuktuk, visibly shattered,
recounts the facts. Matched with other
versions, including that of Patna police,
here’s the gist: it was on early December 3,
when the morning house help came around,
that Papiya and her 70-year old maid’s
bodies were discovered. It was not a sight
anyone would ever want to confront. From
head to toe, every part of Papiya’s body had
been pierced-with a kitchen knife picked
from the house itself Malti Devi was not
spared either-four stab wounds, the same
heart-stopping brutality. The stamp of
extreme hatred and vengeance was all over
the dead bodies, says Bihar’s home secretary
Afzal Amanullah, who is Papiya’s neighbour.
Tuktuk, who rushed from
Delhi, confirmed that Papya’s belongings
were missing. Washing machine, gas cylinder,
Maruti 800, music system, computer, watches,
camera, whatever gold and money there was in
the house. Only those cupboards and heavy
wood almirahs which had valuables were
opened and ransacked. Others were untouched.
Though wary of rubbing the
investigative agency the wrong way, Tuktuk
offers tentatively, “Burglary could just
have been a front¿ She always made it clear
that she would never move out of that
property. It was to look after my mother and
the house she had built that Papiya left a
job in Delhi University and shifted to Patna.
She could have had a job anywhere in the
world, she had earned that kind of respect
from her fraternity.”
Tuktuk refuses to accept
that it was a “motiveless murder”. “A
super-intelligent mastermind seems to be at
work, unleashing the worst form of savagery.
The wounds were vicious” she almost shivers
as she talks.
What could be the reason
behind “the barbarity, the butchering”,
adjectives spill out of Tuktuk. As she lets
them go, she almost clutches back at them,
quietly angry but unsure of opening out
fully. “Her last moments must have been very
painful”. Even the nails were plucked out.
“What could be the motive, it cannot be a
senseless crime” her voice trails off.
Steadying herself, Tuktuk-commonly
thought of as Papiya’s twin since the time
they wrote articles in Junior
Statesman-shares the personal history she’s
never uttered in the last 50 years: “To me,
it seems quite utterly uncanny, it was the
same date-the night of December 2/3. My
father was administered poison by a hospital
nurse at the Patna Government hospital at
someone’s bidding. Then too, the mastermind
was never caught.”
It was their mother who
brought up them up (in all, four sisters)
and built the house with its sprawling
garden. An exclusive enclave meant for
senior officials, the Government had given
them the land after the father’s mysterious
death. In fact, say officials familiar with
the old case, the Patna District Magistrate
was appointed their local guardian.
With Tuktuk approaching the
Prime Minister and President and Papiya’s
well-known academic friends from across the
globe writing to the PM and CM Nitish Kumar,
the Patna police is understandably under
pressure. Amanullah says, “We hope to crack
the case in two three days. It is a
difficult witness-less case, no one is
coming forward to help or cooperate. But
there are certain strong leads. If the trail
goes cold, we’ll call in the CBI.”
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