314 Jodhpur Park. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

An elderly couple in Jodhpur Park woke up to the horror of a murder and a suicide in their house on Wednesday morning.

Their driver Kartik Mondal, 38, had knifed their domestic Arati Das, 42, to death on the terrace before hanging himself from an asbestos shade above the stairs leading to the terrace.

Kartik had been with the Banerjee family of 314 Jodhpur Park for five years while Arati had been with them for the past 31 years.

Madan Mohan Banerjee, a 72-year-old doctor, and his wife Pranati Banerjee, 68, live with their daughter Chandra, on the first floor of the two-storeyed house diagonally opposite the Jodhpur Park puja site.

Kartik, the police said, had “two wives and two children” but was pressuring Arati to marry him.

Rajesh Subarno, the deputy commissioner of police (south), said: “According to a preliminary probe, Kartik had been harassing Arati for the past few months as she had refused to marry him.”

“On Wednesday, he bolted the door to the Banerjees’ flat and then went up to the terrace where Arati must have spurned his advances. Kartik went berserk. He first assaulted her and then stabbed and slashed her repeatedly. Later, he hanged himself with a nylon rope,” he added.

Around 9.30am, Pranati Banerjee found the door of their first-floor flat bolted from the outside.

She raised an alarm and a next-door neighbour climbed up to the first floor with the help of a ladder and let the couple out.

Pranati rushed towards the terrace, where Arati had gone to dry some clothes. She collapsed on the stairs after spotting Kartik’s body.

The police were called in and they found Kartik’s lifeless body hanging from the asbestos sheet.

They followed a trail of blood and discovered Arati’s body on the terrace with multiple wounds on her face, hands, throat, shoulder and chest. A knife was found next to her blood-soaked body.

Kartik, a resident of Rahim Ostagar Lane, was married to Lakshmi for the past 18 years. They have a 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

“Six years ago, he suddenly went missing for two months and came back with his second wife, Jharna. He kept her in a shanty of Panchanantala.... For the past two years, he had his sights set on Arati,” said Sundari Mullick, Lakshmi’s mother.

Arati, a resident of Udaynarayanpur in Howrah, arrived at 314 Jodhpur Park as a young girl and she had been a member of the Banerjee household ever since.

“We have learnt that Kartik had even attended the marriage reception of Arati’s brother earlier this year and a few months later he had asked Arati’s mother for her daughter’s hand in marriage,” said Jawed Shamim, the deputy commissioner of police, detective department.

“But Arati had refused and had complained to her mother and the Banerjee family about how Kartik was hounding her to marry him,” added Shamim.

Kartik must have had murder on his mind from Tuesday when he had borrowed a knife from Madan Mohan Banerjee — a former professor and head surgeon of the Calcutta Medical College’s urology department — on some pretext.

That was the murder weapon found next to the victim on Wednesday morning.