This Article is From Jun 13, 2015

Kolkata Horror House: Unravelling the Mind of the Man Who Lived with His Sister's Corpse

44-year-old engineer, Partha De, once with a reputed IT company, is now at a hospital for the mentally disturbed.

Kolkata: Sexuality, incest and repeated reference to his paternal grandmother as a witch - are some of the subjects Partha De has written about sporadically in his diaries. Partha De slept by the side of his sister's corpse for over five months in his posh Kolkata home. His father committed suicide on 10 June, and police investigations into the incident revealed a terrible tale.

The 44-year-old engineer, once with a reputed IT company and even posted in the US, is now at a hospital for the mentally disturbed. Initial diagnosis: psychosis. The possibility of homicide has prima facie been ruled out after the father's post mortem and the forensic study of his sister's remains.

At the Pavlov Hospital, Partha De has been kept in a bed near the nurses' station in the ward under close supervision. He is on medication.

Even there, when he chooses to speak, he insists that his sister Debjani, who died in December, and his two dogs, which died even earlier, are still by his side.

"The patient has been diagnosed as suffering from psychosis," said Dr Ganesh Prasad, Superintendent of the hospital. "He is saying my sister and the dogs are with me. Right now, I can't make you understand but they are with me. They can't leave me. I love them so much. How can they leave me?" Dr Prasad said, quoting the patient.

Doctors may find Partha De's diaries revealing, diaries liberally strewn with references to sexuality. At one point he writes his mother suspected he was impotent and tried to get a domestic help to seduce him. His sister, he writes elsewhere, had complained to him that their father sexually abused her.

His anger was reserved for his paternal grandmother. He wrote, that in a property dispute, she had sided with his uncle and against his father. His grandmother died in May last year. In his diaries, he repeatedly blames her for his family troubles and calls her a witch.

Doctors, however, are not quizzing him yet. "As a doctor I am not supposed to irritate the patient. I cannot say something which may enrage the patient. Because once he comes to know the real world, he may attempt suicide or become violent," said Dr Prasad.

The police, however, want to question Partha De as soon as possible and will be applying to court for permission to do so. "He has written many things in his diaries but they are random thoughts and, if taken out of context, may get distorted," said police sources about references to sexuality.  

Send me to a Mother Teresa home, Partha De told hospital authorities. There is nothing wrong with me, he said. But doctors will scrutinize a number of plastic dolls found in Debjani's cupboard. All the dolls are dismembered and limbs and head and torso carefully wrapped and stowed away separately. They may have a tale to tell.
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