A sordid affair of murder and suicide shook Sonagachhi on Wednesday when a regular client of a 26-year-old sex worker shot her dead and then put a bullet through his head.

Shikha Singh, a former bar dancer in Mumbai who had shifted base to Calcutta’s biggest red-light area six years ago, was found dead in her third-floor room at 11 Gouri Shanker Lane on Wednesday morning. She was six months pregnant.

Beside her lay Dilip Pratihar, 33, who was last seen entering Shikha’s room on Tuesday night.

Police said Dilip, from Salkia in Howrah, was a regular visitor to Shikha’s room. He would often spend three nights a week at Sonagachhi. But their relationship had apparently soured of late.

“It appears that after a heated argument, sometime early on Wednesday, Dilip brought out a revolver and fired at her head from point-blank range before shooting himself in the head. Both died on the spot,” said an officer of Burtola police station.

Dilip was a trader in plastic toys. He was married with two children.

Shikha was from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. She was barely into her teens when she became a bar dancer in Mumbai.

But when the going got tough for dance bars there, she shifted to Calcutta and moved in with her elder sister Suman, 30, in Gouri Shanker Lane of Sonagachhi.

Suman said she had not heard the shots at night. “I came to know about my sister’s murder in the morning. I do not know why that man killed my sister,” she sobbed.

Around 11.30pm on Tuesday, Dilip made his way to Shikha’s room but she apparently refused to meet him. She relented after Dilip kept knocking on her door.

“We are trying to find out how Dilip got hold of a pistol,” said a police official.

The first to discover the two bodies was Tara Singh, Shikha’s aunt, a madam in Sonagachhi. She had sent a child to Shikha’s room to find out what was wrong when her niece did not emerge till 10am on Wednesday.

“The child came running down and told me Shikha was lying on the bed and there was blood everywhere. I rushed up to see Shikha lying lifeless on the bed with the sheets soaked in blood. Beside her lay Dilip. He too was dead. We immediately alerted the police,” said Tara.

Dilip’s wife Rakhi later told the police that he would often not return home at night. “When I would ask him about his whereabouts he would say he was busy playing football matches by floodlight.”

An officer of Burtola police station said: “According to preliminary investigation Dilip had become very possessive about Shikha, something that she was objecting to. Suman said her sister had never told her who the father of her unborn child was.”