A trip to Paradise on Earth turned into a living hell for three families from Bengal who lost a member each in the terror attack in Pahalgam on Tuesday.

Sameer Guha, Bitan Adhikary and Manish Ranjan Mishra were among the 26 who were killed by gunmen in the picturesque Baisaran Valley.

Sameer Guha

Sameer, a central government employee who traced his roots to Chhattisgarh and lived in Behala’s Sakherbazar, was shot dead by the gunmen in front of his wife Sabari and daughter Subhangi.

The first person to help 52-year-old Sameer’s wife and daughter, who were numb with shock, was their Kashmiri driver.

Md Iqbal took the duo to his home, from where Sabari called up her brother in Calcutta at 3am on Wednesday.

“Ever since visuals of the Pahalgam attack started appearing on TV, I have been horrified. But I was unable to contact them. When we finally spoke, Sabari and Subhangi were safe, but my sister was not in a position to talk,” Sabari’s brother Subrata Ghosh said.

“The driver took my sister and niece to his home, where they spent the night,” he added.

The Guhas live on the first floor of a building on Jagat Roy Chowdhury Road, a less than 10-minute walk from Diamond Harbour Road in Sakherbazar.

Sameer used to work in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation and was posted at the CGO Complex in Salt Lake.

Sameer bought the Behala flat in 2019 after getting posted in Calcutta.

“We received a call early in the morning from Sabari. She was sobbing. She informed us about Sameerda’s death. She was unable to speak. Her daughter told us what had happened,” Archana Gajender, a neighbour who spoke to Subhangi on Wednesday morning, told this newspaper on Wednesday.

“She said they heard two gunshots. Initially, they did not understand what was happening but within minutes, they were facing gunmen in army fatigues. ‘Modi ka aadmi hai?’ one of them asked. When Sameerda said yes, they opened fire,” Archana added.

Subrata said his brother-in-law and his family loved to explore new places.

“This was their first trip to Kashmir and they were very excited. They left on April 16. All of us thought that Kashmir had changed. But this attack proved that nothing has,” Subrata said.

Mayor Firhad Hakim visited Sameer’s residence on Wednesday. “This is unacceptable. Going to a vacation together and coming back in a coffin,” Hakim said.

The Guhas were soft spoken and affable. “In a few years, they became an integral part of our locality and the Durga Puja at the club,” neighbour Dipak Chakraborty said.

Bitan Adhikary

Forty-year-old Bitan Adhikary was taking in the beauty of the Baisaran meadows along with wife Sohini and their three-and-a-half-year-old son Hridaan when a barrage of bullets shattered its calm.

Sohini told this newspaper that before they could flee the spot, they were accosted by men with their faces masked.

The family was asked if they were Hindu or Muslim. “Before we could respond or react, they opened fire. My husband died on the spot,” Sohini said.

Adhikary, an engineer from the city, was based in Brandon, Florida.

Sohini and Hridaan live in an apartment on Baishnabghata Lane off Netajinagar.

“Every day, Sohini used to take the boy to his school on an auto. Sohini’s husband had come recently. Their windows were closed for a few days. So I guessed that they must have gone out,” said a neighbour.

Known to friends and relatives as lively and respectful, Bitan was born and brought up in Durgapur. He did his electronics engineering from BC Roy College and came to Calcutta to join an IT company.

“The family moved out of Durgapur several years ago but we still keep in touch through social media. I was following his trip to Kashmir through his photographs and videos. Even yesterday, he posted a photo with his new moustache. A few hours later, I saw him on television. He was dead. This is unbelievable,” said Tarun Kumar Banerjee, a resident of the same neighbourhood where the Adhikarys lived in Durgapur.

Bitan’s father Bireswar Adhikary, 87, and mother Maya, 75, came to know about their son’s death on Wednesday.

“We switched on the television on Tuesday night when we saw the news. They were showing our son, daughter-in-law and grandson,” Maya said.

Bitan’s body reached Calcutta on Wednesday evening.

Hakim met the bereaved parents at their home on Kalipada Mukherjee Road in Behala.

Manish Ranjan Mishra

Manish Ranjan Mishra, the third victim from Calcutta, was a section officer with the Intelligence Bureau in Hyderabad. He hails from Jhalda in Purulia and was on a holiday in Pahalgam with his wife and two children.

Manish, 42, wanted to take his elderly parents to the Vaishno Devi temple and had asked them to meet him at Katra. His parents were on the way when they got a call that they shouldn’t proceed.

Manish was vacationing with his wife Jaya, son Samriddh, 10, and daughter Jishu, 6, when he was killed by the gunmen.

“We last spoke two days ago when he said he was going to Srinagar and that he would take us to Vaishno Devi. He asked us to go to Katra from where he was planning to proceed to Vaishno Devi. Yesterday, we were on our way to Katra when we got a call. I was told that my son had been injured and that we should return home,” Manish’s mother Asha said.

Son of a school headmaster in Purulia’s Jhalda, Manish was the eldest of three siblings. Before Hyderabad, he was posted in Ranchi and Delhi, a family friend said.

According to friend and neighbour Sanjay Pathak, the family was originally from Bihar but had been settled in Bengal for generations.

Manish’s younger brothers are posted in the food department and the excise department, Pathak said.

“We had planned to meet bhaiya in Jammu on Wednesday and had begun our journey by car on Tuesday morning. When we reached Daltonganj in Jharkhand, our sister-in-law called us from someone’s mobile and gave us the tragic news,” Manish’s brother Vinit said.

Manish’s father Mangalesh, a retired school teacher suffering from cardiac ailments, has taken to bed following the news of his son’s death.

Neighbours said Manish was a brilliant student and loved to visit his hometown Jhalda twice a year. He used to organise a trip with his elderly parents every year, they said.