Two women were arrested on the banks of the Ganges in Kolkata’s Kumartuli on early Tuesday as they were trying to dispose of a trolley bag carrying the headless and chopped body of a woman in the river.

The two women, mother and daughter duo, were identified as Falguni Ghosh and Aarati Ghosh.

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The woman, whose chopped and headless body was recovered from the trolley bag, is reportedly Sumita Ghosh, an elderly relative of the two arrested duo.

The arrested women are reportedly residents of Barasat in North 24-Parganas districts. An informed by the police sources said they arrived at Sealdah station from Barasat by an early morning train with that trolley bag and hired a cab to move around the city.

As per the version of the driver of the cab, the two women first went to Princep Ghat, a concrete-structured bank of the Ganges in Kolkata. However, as per the version of the cab driver, after loitering around at that crowded place for some time, the two women asked the cab driver to take them to a different ghat.

City police sources said the two women then reached Kumartuli Ghat, a similar concrete-structured bank of the Ganges. There, the two women brought out the trolley bag from the cab and started to drag it near the edge of the concrete-structured bank.

The morning walkers loitering in the area, suspicious of the effort with which the two women were dragging the trolley bag, apprehended them. In the face of questioning by the morning walkers, the women first said that the trolley bag was carrying the body of their pet dog.

On being suspicious, the morning walkers prevented them from disposing of the trolley bag and also informed the local police station. The cops on arrival at the spot recovered the body of the headless body of the woman chopped into three pieces.

Preliminary investigations suggest that Falguni and Arati, who are mother and daughter, killed their elderly relative, Sumita Ghosh, in their rented house in Madhyamgram before attempting to dispose of her remains in the river. Police are now probing the motive behind the murder and verifying reports from neighbours that the accused often hosted unidentified visitors at odd hours.

The arrested women have been taken into police custody, and further investigations are underway.