Kundan and Mamata after their arrest. Pictures by Krishna Chandra Mishra

Kamarkundu, March 20: Armed with a pistol — in case his disapproving in-laws needed to be scared away — Kundan Singh was waiting to catch a train to take his bride home.

But luck ran out for the runaway lovers before the loaded improvised pistol could be put to use.

Kundan accidentally dropped the weapon at Tarakeswar station, 70km from Calcutta, where he and Mamata, 19, were waiting for a train to Bally, having tied the knot at the Shiv temple.

Passengers raised the alarm and Government Railway Police personnel came running.

“Kundan and Mamata were taken to Kamarkunda and later arrested under the Arms Act. They will be produced in court tomorrow,” said Shankar Singh, superintendent of railway police, Howrah.

Kundan, an executive with a car finance company who is also doing his BA in Surendranath College’s evening section, confessed during a “marathon interrogation” that he was carrying the pistol to “deal with Mamata’s parents” if they came in their way, the police said.

But he refused to reveal how he had got hold of the weapon.

Kundan and Mamata, a first-year BA student of Jaipuria College, had left their homes, in Bally, at the crack of dawn. They met at Sheoraphuli, from where they took a Tarakeswar-bound train.

Kundan’s father Ganesh, a retired employee of Jayshree Textiles, alleged that Mamata’s three brothers had beaten his son up four months ago. “But we did not protest as Mamata’s father is an influential CPM leader in the Bally area,” he said.

But Ganesh refused to accept that a pistol was found on Kundan. “My son is preoccupied with his studies. I cannot believe that he was carrying a pistol,” he said.

Mamata’s parents were not available for comment but her 68-year-old grandmother said she wasn’t aware of her relationship with Kundan.