A mechanic standing on the roof of an elevator in motion was crushed to death when he lost his balance and was wedged between the wall and the lift somewhere between the ninth floor and the first.

Krishanu Nashkar, 26, had just repaired an electrical fault in the elevator of a landmark 10-storeyed central government housing complex in Dover Lane in south Calcutta when tragedy struck.

Police quoted his nephew and colleague Manoj Nashkar, 19, as saying that Krishanu had asked him to take the elevator to the ground floor while he stood on its roof.

“It was around 3pm. I pressed the button and the lift made its way down but got stuck between the first and the second floors,” he recalled.

Manoj first shouted and then thumped the roof for a response from Krishanu but didn’t get any. Hearing his cries for help, the guards of the apartment building reached the second floor and spotted Krishanu’s hands jutting out from the crevice between the elevator and the wall.

A team from Gariahat police station reached the Dover Lane complex around 4.15pm but failed to pull him out of the elevator trap. Fire brigade personnel later extricated Krishanu’s mangled body.

“We have found a cut mark on his neck. The body has been sent to National Medical College for post-mortem,” said Chinmoy Batyabal, the officer-in-charge of Gariahat police station.

Krishanu, a resident of Narendrapur, was an employee of a Howrah-based firm that has a maintenance contract with the housing society. He and Manoj reached 16 Dover Lane in the morning to repair the switches in the elevator.

“It still isn’t clear whether he slipped and fell when the lift was on the ninth floor or between the first and the second floors,” an investigating officer said.

A resident of the building, home to senior government officials, told Metro that he had spotted Krishanu perched on the roof of the elevator and giving instructions to Manoj.