A homemaker in her early 30s was allegedly shot at by her husband in their 15th-floor apartment in Howrah’s Shibpur on Wednesday morning, police said.
A bullet grazed the right side of the woman’s head and she slumped on the floor, bleeding.
Poonam Yadav’s husband drove her to a nearby hospital. She was later transferred to a private hospital in Calcutta after her condition started to deteriorate.
Late in the evening, doctors said the patient was traumatised and had not recovered from the shock.
The police have arrested the husband, Gopal Yadav, and the gun, which the police said was a pistol, was seized from the apartment.
Gopal has been charged with attempted murder and causing grievous injury by a dangerous weapon.
Till late evening, Howrah City Police could not say if Gopal had a licence or if the gun was illegal.
The couple’s two children, one-and-a-half and three, were at home when the shot was fired, the police said.
Senior officers stated that Gopal could not produce the licence for the firearm that was in his possession.
“The incident took place in the D-block of Ideal Grand around 10am. One bullet was fired from the pistol. Gopal claimed to have a licence for the gun. We are trying to find out if it was an accidental firing, as the husband claims, or a deliberate attempt to kill the wife,” a senior officer of Howrah City Police said.
The gun will undergo a forensic examination.
The housing complex where the incident occurred is among the more upscale
ones that have come up in Shibpur of late. Gopal lived with his family on the 15th floor of an apartment in the D-Block.
“It appears that the couple have been living at the housing complex for several years. Gopal, a resident of Siwan in Bihar, runs a business. Immediately after the incident, he drove his wife to a nearby hospital,” the police officer said.
CCTV footage from the apartment’s lobby, which is available to the police, revealed a person helping Poonam step out of an elevator.
The man held her before bringing her to a wrought iron bench near the elevator, where she somehow managed to sit. Gopal is seen scampering out of the lobby and returning a short while later to hold Poonam and take her away, possibly to his car.
The security guard at the lobby is seen standing and watching the proceedings along with another couple, who are residents of the apartment, and were on their way out.
“We have sought additional footage from cameras that are installed in different locations across the housing complex to understand if someone visited the couple on the 15th floor either on Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning,” the officer said.
Gopal told some of his acquaintances that the bullet accidentally went off while he was cleaning his pistol on Wednesday morning. It grazed past his wife’s head, he told the police.
The secretary of the complex’s welfare association, Pankaj Sharma, said that Gopal told them before his arrest that the firing was accidental and not intended to kill his wife.