In June 2015 the city of joy Kolkata woke up with a shivering news. The house of horror in Kolkata Robinson Street, where a man was found living with the skeletons of his elder sister and two dogs for the last few months. Since then, the De residence was never forgotten.
The case was unveiled when the residents of 3 Robinson Street had alerted the police after seeing thick smoke emanating from one of the windows of The De residence. As they try to discover the source of the possible fire, they come across the bathroom of the home and discover Arabinda De, the 77 years old man possibly the guardian of the family lying on the bathroom floor. It seemed like he had committed suicide by setting himself on fire and succumbed to his death.
The police return to the station with Partha De, Arabinda’s 44 years old son and the sole survivor of the house in Robinson Street. As the police start questioning Partha, they grow uncomfortable with the suspicion that Partha is hiding something. This is when Partha opened up to a police officer and confessed that he was living with the skeleton of his sister Debjani De. He told the police that even though the act sounded criminal, he was doing this out of love and his attachment to his sister. He lived with the skeletons in their own room, talked with them and fed them.
It was the death of senior De that opened the pandora’s box of horrors inside. However, what added to the mystery and eeriness of the house are certain letters and a diary, apart from eight laptops and desktop computers, which the police recovered during a search. Now, the limelight was on the only living member of the family — Partha De.
The police soon rushed to the house and soon enough, stumble across number of skeletons. Those skeletons are of Partha’s elder sister Debjani De (47), who died in December 2014 and their two pet labrador dogs (died in August and September 2014 respectively).
As the police went near the bed drawn by the stench, the skeleton of Debjani De was found under a blanket with a bunch of teddy bears. Inside the room, cakes and pastries were littered on the floor and, at the foot of the bed, a heap of bones.
Debjani, who was a singing teacher at a reputed school in Kolkata, was equally detached from the world like her brother Partha. Debjani’s personal diaries would reveal she was trying to “erase a evil spirit” in the house. According to Partha, Debjani had started fasting to ward off any negative energy so that normalcy returned home. Within a couple of months, she literally starved herself to death. The house was filled with thousands of spiritual books, and Partha repeatedly said that his sister was extremely religious.
In the first month after Debjani’s death, Partha had sealed the doors and windows of her room with tapes and kept the air-conditioner on full blast to hide the unbearable stench, while he himself started living in the drawing room. Partha used to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his late sister’s corpse and even slept in the same bed with her after she died in November 2014. Partha also regularly fed the dogs and changed bedsheets for his sister’s skeleton.
The De family had a pretty normal childhood, but things turned south after the death of Partha and Debjani’s mother who died of cancer in 2008. According to neighbours, the family went into a social isolation since the incident and kept among themselves.
The house thereafter earned for itself the epithet “Kankal Bari” (the house of skeletons | house of horror in kolkata) and was attracting ‘tourists’ and curious onlookers from every corner of the city until the police locked up the main gate.
After Partha was presented in court, he was sent to the Pavlov Mental Home at Gobra in east Kolkata.
DIARIES OF COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIPS
A few of Partha’s diaries were also recovered during the course of the investigation. The write-ups hinted at sexual relations within the family. Two of his entries were striking in particular. These were reported by several media outlets, but these portions were from a ToI report.
‘My sister was growing old, and she was asserting her independence. My mother was jealous of her. We went to Digha (on vacation). My mother made her strip in the bathroom…’
‘My mother thinks I am impotent. She wanted to see me develop a relationship. This is why she used to send a maidservant to my room…’
Psychiatrist who examined Partha at Pavlov Mental Hospital had told that Partha could have had necrophilia, a condition in which a person is sexually attracted to corpses. Partha De might have been in a physical relationship with the dead bodies he has been living with. It is not yet established, but such behaviour is not unusual on the part of psychosis patients.
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF PARTHA DE’s JOURNEY | END OF HOUSE OF HORROR IN KOLKATA
In 21st February 2017 the burnt body of Partha De, 45, was found in the bathroom of the apartment in which he had been living for the past few months.
Partha De allegedly committed suicide. Petrol in a bottle and a matchbox lay next to his body. He had been staying alone in the flat since his release two months ago from Pavlov Mental Hospital.
In the middle of the media and social scrutiny, Partha De was found dead in 2017, two years after the horrific discoveries were made on Robinson Street. It says history repeats itself. The scene of his death was almost similar to that of his father. His charred corpse was found on the bathroom floor with a bottle of petrol and matchsticks.