Amrita Sahu recounts Saturday night’s events after the doorbell rang. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

A robber who had tried to force his way into a doctor’s apartment by brandishing a toy gun ended up hiding in a loft and surrendering without a fight when the men with the real guns came in.

Police found Sausad Alam crouched inside a 1 ftx3 ft loft at the door to the terrace of the Muraripukur Road building where he had attempted the robbery on Saturday night. They would have dragged him out immediately had he not been holding what everyone then thought was a loaded gun.

But Alam couldn’t shoot even if he had wanted to; so he handed over the fake weapon and meekly came out of the loft when the police threatened to shoot him.

The drama may have ended tamely, but it was still an unnerving one for anaesthesiologist Ranjan Kumar Sahu and his family. It started at 11.45pm, when the doorbell rang and the doctor’s daughter Amrita went to answer it.

“My parents were asleep but I was still studying. The eyehole on our main door is defective, which is why I could not see who it was. The visitor said in Bengali that he was from an apartment on the floor above ours and needed some water. But his accent was different, and there are only Bengali families on the first floor. I became suspicious,” Amrita, a student of mechanical engineering, said.

She woke up her father and asked him to take a look. Sahu, a consultant at Lohia Matri Seva Sadan, half-opened the door and saw a masked man pointing a small gun at him. The collapsible gate was still not drawn, but he had the presence of mind to slam the door shut.

By then, Sahu’s wife Anita had raised an alarm. Neighbour P.K. Biswas called the police and a team arrived from Maniktala police station within 10 minutes. Alam, who had possibly entered the building much before attempting the break-in, could not flee because the caretaker had locked the main gate by 10.30pm. He ran up and found the loft.

The police team was on the verge of giving up the search when the caretaker, Sunil, spotted Alam. Joint commissioner of police Pradip Chatterjee said on Sunday that the Razabazar resident’s brother Naushad had been contracted for renovation of the Sahus’ second-floor apartment two months ago.