Flowers at a memorial for Saswati in Santiniketan

Ghatal, Jan. 7: One of Amaresh Kundu’s friends in his hometown here had sent him a text message three months ago saying Saswati’s parents had fixed her match elsewhere.

Malay Sinha, 27, today said: “Once we heard from villagers in the first week of October that Saswati’s parents had arranged her marriage with a young man working in Maharashtra, we passed on the information to Amaresh in Calcutta.”

Sinha said Amaresh, a cook at the Tollygunge police station mess, was ridiculed by his friends for his failed relationship.

“When we cracked jokes about him for having failed to stop someone from snatching the girl, he told us that he would not allow that to happen, come what may,” said Sinha, an unemployed youth.

Suman Met, who spends most of his time at the Ghatal taxi stand, said Amaresh had become “furious” when he disclosed to him that the youth from Maharashtra had visited Saswati in Santiniketan.

“Amaresh came here during Kali Puja. He wanted to visit Saswati’s hostel immediately when we told him that the Maharashtra man with whom her parents had arranged her marriage had started meeting her,” Met said.

As Met spoke on Amaresh’s love life, another friend appeared.

“It might be that he had made up his mind to kill Saswati when he came here. But we never thought he would also kill himself,” said the third friend, who did not want to be named.

Saswati’s uncle Asim Pal confirmed that the family had fixed Saswati’s marriage with the Maharashtra youth in October.

“The man we chose had his roots in Ghatal. He had a decent job in a private engineering firm,” said Asim.

The Pals had all assembled at the house of Saswati’s father Shyamal when the marriage was fixed.

The Maharashtra youth was the son of one of Shyamal’s friends.

Asim said: “It was a great relief to all of us when Saswati also agreed to snap her relations with Amaresh and marry him.”

Amaresh’s father is a Group D employee at the Ghatal Subdivisional Hospital, where his body was brought today.

Members of Agrani club, of which Amaresh was a member, consoled his parents.

“Dada was of the quiet sort. I never saw him losing temper. He killed himself and the girl he loved to avenge the injustice meted out to him,” said his sister Tapati Mandal.

She got married to a farmer in Kharar, about 8km from Ghatal in West Midnapore, four years ago.

“Dada told me last week that he would come here for the local fair on January 15,” Tapati said and broke down in tears, clutching mother Pratima’s hands.