On tape: 'For five years, I thought of killing him. I have done so now'

Serampore, April 12: A homemaker has looked into a video camera in a police station not too far from Calcutta and recounted a tale few families would want to live through.
"Ami panch bochhor dhorey thik korechhi amar swami ke marbo. Ami amar swami ke khun korechhi (For five years, I had been thinking of killing my husband. I have murdered my husband)," Papiya Banerjee, 35, was quoted as saying in the taped statement to which only investigators have had access so far.
The full account in the 30-minute tape traces a tragedy that appears to have been fuelled by a usual suspect ' alcohol ' and other searing elements not usually associated with middle-class families with a modest but steady income in Serampore, 35km from Calcutta.
Papiya tells in the tape that she killed her husband Tapan Banerjee, 55, after he repeatedly blew his salary on alcohol, refused to pay for the education of their two children who had to be taken out of a school, and asked her to entertain his friends.
Police are yet to establish the veracity of her full account but a preliminary post-mortem report has indicated Tapan was strangled to death ' as Papiya claimed.
Tapan was a boiler operator in a chemical factory and earned Rs 18,000 a month. Papiya is a graduate but chose to be a homemaker to look after the children, a 15-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter.
Papiya has told the police that the family lived in a rented flat in Thakurbari Street in Serampore town and her husband frequently called his friends over for drinking sessions.
"I was beaten up by my husband whenever I protested. He was only interested in drinking and blowing his salary in this manner. A year ago, he stopped paying the school fees and I had to take my children out of the local English medium school. My son was in Class IX and my daughter was in Class III. When I raised the issue, he told me to earn and asked me to entertain his superiors," Papiya was quoted as saying in the tape.
"I was sick of my husband. He used to ask our daughter to get chhola (gram) so he could have it with his drinks. If she ever bought a chocolate, he used to become angry with her," she said in the statement.
"He used to bring food (from outside) for himself but never for us. He used to hand over very little money for the family and many a time, we had to skip dinner. But he used to have alcohol regularly with the food he bought for himself," Papiya added.
The homemaker said in her statement she was taken to a party at the house of one of Tapan's colleagues a year ago. The children had accompanied her. "At the party, my husband told me that one of his senior colleagues wanted to be entertained and he was willing to pay Rs 20,000. My husband told me it was a matter of five minutes and that he would wait with the children outside the room," Papiya was quoted as saying.
Papiya was arrested yesterday afternoon on charges of murdering her husband. She was produced in the Serampore additional chief judicial magistrate's court today and remanded in judicial custody for 14 days.
The inspector in charge of Serampore police station, Tathagata Pandey, said: "She confessed everything during interrogation. We have video-recorded her entire statement."
Accounts by women are usually recorded to ensure that the suspects are not intimidated or harassed by police officers. "According to a recent Supreme Court ruling, video-recording of an interrogation is acceptable in a court of law," Calcutta High Court advocate Jayanta Narayan Chatterjee said.
Narrating the events leading to the murder, Papiya said in the tape that on Tuesday morning, she had sent her children to her mother's home nearby and bought sleeping pills from a medicine shop.
"My husband returned from the factory with a bottle of rum and meat at 5.45pm. He asked me to cook the meat. I became angry and told him that if he had spent the money buying vegetables, we would have had proper meals for a few days," Papiya said in her statement.
Papiya said she made coffee for her husband in which she mixed some sleeping pills. "I saw my husband becoming drowsy. Then I went to cook the meat. When I returned from the kitchen, he was drinking. When he went to the toilet, I mixed some more sleeping pills in his drink. When he fell asleep, I strangled him with a nylon cord from behind and held onto it for 10 minutes with all my strength," Papiya was quoted as saying in the statement.
Around midnight, she went to her mother's house and told her that her husband had fallen ill after drinking liquor.
"We took my husband to a local nursing home in an ambulance. A doctor saw my husband in the ambulance and told us he had died of a heart attack and asked us to get a death certificate from a local doctor. I then informed my husband's younger brother, Nirmal, that his brother had died of a stroke," she said.
Police officer Pandey said: "Nirmal Banerjee suspected foul play and lodged a complaint with us, holding Papiya responsible. We questioned Papiya on the basis of the complaint and she confessed."
The police are trying to verify her account. "We will speak to several people who knew the couple to verify whether what Tapan's wife is saying is correct. We do not rule out the possibility of her making up the charges against her husband to gain sympathy. We will investigate if there was any other motive for killing Tapan," an officer said.
Amal Banerjee, Tapan's nephew, defended his uncle. "I have known my uncle to be a good man. We don't believe the allegations levelled against him," said Amal.
Haradhan Debnath, who used to work with Tapan, said Tapan was "of a friendly disposition".
"As far as we know, he was fond of his wife. We are shocked," Debnath said. "Tapan used to drink but that doesn't make him a bad man."

I know many people will not agree with me but I think this wife has done the correct thing.
You must imagine the agony she must have gone through all these years for her to have done such a thing.
I know people will now say she should have gone to the police and complained.
But knowing the police, they too may have raped her.