On the night of July 7, 2007 her son Kamal died at his Sonarpur residence in South 24 Parganas. A local physician had declared the cause of his death in the death certificate as “myocardial infraction”, a finding Sarkar just couldn’t accept.

After doing several rounds of the Sonarpur police station, Sarkar approached the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Alipore. Following the CJM’s directive, the Sonarpur police exhumed Kamal’s body on October 11 and sent it for postmortem.

The report prepared by Dr T K Roy, medico-legal autopsy surgeon with the Alipore police morgue — stated “there is an evidence of bruise at left side of trachea (2.5x2.5 inches) with fracture of hyoid bone on left side. The bruise showed evidence of vital reaction. Further, there is an evidence of bruise to scalp tissue and in the left frontal and temporal area, bloodstained brain tissue situated over a six inch area.” The report concluded that “on the extremely decomposed body, it is seen that death in all probability was due to the effect of strangulation manually, associated with brain injury ante-mortem and homicidal in nature.” Sources close to Sarkar suspect an extra-marital affair of Kamal’s wife Nandita to be the reason behind his death.

Based on the police report, Nandita was arrested on January 23 and remanded in judicial custody by the Additional CJM, Baruipur. Later, she was released on bail. Sarkar, who had expected police custody for Nandita, then made a special appeal to the DIG, CID on February 2.

CID submitted a report on March 19 to Baruipur ACJM mentioning that “based on the statement of neighbours and relatives of the deceased and comparing their statement with the accused, Nandita, prima facie no foul play could be detected behind the death.” It submitted that the CID be allowed to exhume the body again.

What Sarkar and her lawyer Subhamoy Samaddar find ironic is that despite an official postmortem report from the previous exhumation, Kamal’s remains are being sent for postmortem again.

DIG CID Neeraj Narain Pandey said Kamal’s body was exhumed again to further their investigation. “It is not as if we are not considering the earlier postmortem report. Medico-legal experts advised us that the body should be re-examined,” Pandey said.

“I’m hoping that my son gets justice. They may have arrested Nandita, but what about those who assisted her in killing my son?” Sarkar said.