The boys first thought someone had burst a cracker, then they saw the young man slump to the ground.

Armed assailants shot dead a young man in Rabindra Kanan, a park on Beadon Street, early this morning while a group of boys played football and a few morning walkers strolled on the sprawling patch of green.

“We were busy playing when we saw a few youths walk towards a person. It now appears that he was trying to escape, but at that moment we did not pay much attention and had gone back to our game,” one of the boys told police later.

“Suddenly, we heard a big sound. For a moment we thought it was a fire cracker, but then who would burst a cracker so early in the morning?”

When they looked around, the boys saw a man, who appeared to be in his mid-30s, falling to the ground. “There was no one else in sight, the killers had vanished. They were too fast for us to even see how many of them were there,” the boy added.

Some of the morning walkers, too, had heard the shot but did not see anyone as a hedge blocked a clear view of the spot.

“By the time our men arrived, the youth was lying in a pool of blood with a bullet injury in his chest,” said P.K. Dutta, the officer-in-charge of the Burtolla police station.

The police got the information late as a technical snag had left phone lines dead. Soon after news of the murder spread, local residents tried calling up the Burtolla police station. With no one picking up the phone, they called up the Girish Park police station.

The delay, according to police officers, proved fatal.

By the time the youth was shifted to Calcutta Medical College, he was dead.

More than 12 hours after the murder, the youth was still to be identified.

His body had been sent for a post-mortem and a case against “unknown” persons had been lodged.