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Kolkata man suspected to have murdered Subir Chaki arrested in Mumbai
Six people have been arrested by the Kolkata police on charges of killing Subir Chaki, an alumnus of IIT Kharagur and IIM, Calcutta, and his driver. They were found in Chaki’s ancestral house in south Kolkata with multiple stab injuries.
KOLKATA: Vicky Haldar, the prime suspect in the murder of Subir Chaki, 61, a top executive of a private firm, and his driver Rabin Mondal, 65, was arrested in Mumbai on Sunday evening, people familiar with the development said.
Vicky Haldar, who was arrested along with an accomplice, Subhankhar Mondal, is being brought to Kolkata on a transit remand granted till November 3 by a Mumbai judge.
The two suspects were traced to a parking lot of an under-construction high-rise apartment building in Mumbai on Sunday evening and arrested, said an officer of the detective department of the Kolkata Police which cracked the case. The Mumbai Police helped in the investigation.
Haldar had been on the run after killing Subir Chaki, managing director of Mumbai-headquartered Kilburn Engineering, and his driver at the top executive’s ancestral house in south Kolkata’s Gariahat area on October 17.
Initial investigations by the detective department indicated that Chaki and his driver were murdered after the top executive recognised Vicky who was posing as a buyer for Chaki’s three-storey ancestral house at Kankulia Road. The intention, a police officer said, was to rob Chaki.
Vicky met Chaki for the first time around 10 months ago under a different name. Subir Chaki had been trying to sell the house where he was found dead for nearly six years. It is not clear how that meeting ended.
On October 17, Haldar and his accomplices killed Subir Chaki and his driver, and decamped with Chaki’s gold rings and purse, which contained some cash and credit cards, a second police officer said.
Vicky Haldar’s mother Mithu Haldar was the first of the six suspects to be arrested on October 20. Mithu Halder is alleged to have offered ₹50,000 each to two of the suspects, Jahir Gazi and Bapi Mondal, to help her son carry out the robbery. Police told a Kolkata court that the Vicky Halder and his mother, who worked as a nurse for elderly people a short distance from Chaki’s ancestral house, planned the crime.
Jahir Gazi and Bapi Mondal were picked up from the remote Patharpratima area of South 24 Parganas on October 22. The fourth, Sanjay Mondal, an e-rickshaw driver, was picked up from the Parulia area of South 24 Parganas district on October 29.
Officers said that Vicky’s interrogation will reveal more information and help investigators trace the knives used in the crime.
In the past, Subir Chaki, an alumnus of IIT Kharagur and IIM, Calcutta, sent his driver with the keys when prospective buyers wanted to see the house. The police suspect that Chaki might have been led to believe that he was close to sealing a deal and hence came to the house himself on October 17.
Chaki, who lived at New Town on the eastern outskirts of the city with his wife, mother and mother-in-law, also owned property at a posh south Kolkata condominium.
