The Ananda Sadan hostel

Calcutta/Ghatal, Jan. 6: Told the love of his life would not marry him, Amaresh Kundu went about collecting information on how to fire a gun.

Amaresh’s mother told him over the phone on Thursday night that Saswati Pal had called to say she would not marry him.

The young man spent the next two days looking for tips on guns.

“All through Friday and Saturday, he kept asking us various questions about operating a revolver,” said a police official at the Tollygunge station. Amaresh works in the mess of the police barracks.

“He wanted to know whether the wrist jerks after one pulls the trigger and the range of a revolver. We did not suspect anything because we thought he was just being curious like any common man,” the official said.

“Last night, he asked us to demonstrate how to fire a revolver, but we turned down his request,” said a constable.

Saswati Pal lying dead and Amaresh Kundu (his wound masked) in hospital. Pictures by Indrajit Roy

Other than the frequent questions about firearms, Amaresh, who sometimes doubled as a driver, behaved as usual. “He served us food and chatted after dinner. None of us realised that he was planning to kill someone,” the constable said.

Amaresh had started working at the mess a year and a half ago. A canteen employee, who also hailed from Ghatal in West Midnapore, had brought him to the station, the official said.

Amaresh’s mother Sunima said in Ghatal today that her son “went mad when I told him over the phone on Thursday night that we were fixing his marriage with someone else as Saswati did not want to marry him”.

Sunima lives with her husband Bijoy at Ghatal sub-divisional hospital staff quarters. Bijoy is a general duty attendant at the hospital.

“Saswati telephoned me between 8 pm and 9 pm on Thursday night to tell me to arrange my son’s marriage elsewhere. I was surprised at her sudden change of mind. I told her ‘you had insisted on marrying my son even when I told you that your well-off parents would not accept this marriage’,” Sunima said.

The phone then got disconnected, she added.

“For the last six months, Saswati used to call us up to enquire about my health and that of Amaresh’s father. When we put pressure on my son to marry, he told us that he would marry none other than Saswati,” Sunima said.

Bapi Paul, a relative of the Kundus, said Amaresh and Saswati had been close to each other for the last three years.

Saswati’s younger sister, a Class XII student, said she was aware of the relationship.

“I had heard about didi’s relationship with Amaresh Kundu. But I never saw them together. We love our parents very much and will do whatever they want,” the girl said.

Shyamal, Saswati’s father and an upper division clerk in the land and land reforms office at Ghatal, was so inconsolable that he could not speak. He reached Bolpur subdivisional hospital tonight.