The Honda City in which Tanya was killed. Picture by Vitla Images

Calcutta, July 27: For Kalidas Banerjee, it would be a long and lonely journey to Bangalore tomorrow to perform his murdered daughter Tanya’s last rites.

If he makes it at all.

At his home in Howrah, a grief-stricken Kalidas winced today as he mentioned the 33 stab wounds his daughter reportedly received, and said he was yet to make up his mind about catching the flight tomorrow morning.

“I’m quite confused and have nothing much to say. I am wondering what to do. Should I go or should I not? What should I be doing once I reach Bangalore?” he told The Telegraph.

“Yes, I feel like seeing my daughter one last time. But thinking about the several wounds she suffered ? I don’t feel like it. She must have had a very painful death,” the father said before he got up and went off to the bedroom.

Tanya’s aunt Shobha Banerjee, however, implied Kalidas would be going by saying Tanya would be cremated in Bangalore.

“We have decided her last rites will be performed in Bangalore and her father will attend it. It is no use bringing the body here. I’m trying to find someone to accompany him to Bangalore,” she said.

Tanya, 31, a BPO worker, was found dead on a highway 230 km from Bangalore yesterday morning. Her boyfriend, 27-year-old Gururaj Kishore, has confessed to the murder and has been arrested.

The tragedy is the third to strike Kalidas in three years. His son died in an accident in 2003 and his wife of a heart attack in 2005.

“My brother-in-law has always been a very proud man and refuses to give up despite the adversities in life. But this time it would be difficult for him to get over Tanya’s death,” Shobha said.

“I haven’t seen him cry but he stayed awake through the night. He is hurt by not only his daughter’s death but also the news of Tanya’s affair with Kishore, a local youth, over the past seven or eight months.”

Shobha, however, added that the family knew about the relationship. “It’s true that they have been going out together for sometime now. Tanya wanted to marry him but he, being a few years younger, refused.”

Kishore, however, has told the police it was she who kept refusing to marry him.

Kalidas’s neighbour Sanat Adok, who lives in the same building ? Belur Ramakrishna Abashan ? said he had known the family for the past eight years. “They earlier used to live in the railway quarters. Whatever little I have seen of her (Tanya) ? she was away from home most of the time ? she seemed a decent person. But she didn’t make friends in the locality,” Adok said.