Kolkata: Police officers on Wednesday finally succeeded in questioning Partha De with the help of representatives of Missionaries of Charity in their bid to unravel the mystery surrounding the house of horrors. Partha, the sole survivor of the De family of 3 Robinson Street, had earlier insisted that he would speak to the police only in presence of representatives of the Mother House.

Sources said that before the police could question him, two nuns and a priest first counselled him. Then representatives of the Mother House, members of the medical board, including the hospital super Ganesh Prasad, and three senior police officers spoke to Partha.

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Initially, he expressed his displeasure over the presence of “so many people”. However, Partha later cooperated.

The police had prepared a list of 25 questions to be asked to him so that it could find the missing links of the mysterious case. “Partha cooperated with us,” Mr Prasad later said. After nearly 90 minutes of questioning, the police officers felt that they have found answers to most of the intriguing questions and were very close to solving the horror house mystery.

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Partha informed them that after the death of two family pet dogs in August 2014, the relations between the family members were soured. His elder sister Debjani went into depression. The situation was further aggravated by their father Arabinda De’s behaviour. In a fit of drunken anger, he told Partha and Debjani that they would have to obey him because they depended on his money. Deeply hurt, the brother-sister duo stopped talking to their father and the family was split into two. Arabinda lived separately in one part of the flat while Partha and Debjani lived in another. Debjani started deep meditation and gradually stopped taking food. She survived on just water for weeks and later died of starvation on December 29.

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In reply to the question as to why he kept her body in his room Partha repeated his reply that he loved his sister so much that he did not want to part with her body. Arabinda, who was in the dark about Debjani’s death, accidentally saw the skeleton early in March. He did not disclose it to any one because he feared that the disclosure would land Partha in trouble.