Abhijit Mahto and (below) his mother at their Gamharia residence. Picture by Srinivas

Jamshedpur, Jan. 20: A PhD student who studied in a Calcutta school and had graduated from Jadavpur University was found murdered in his flat close to the campus of America’s Duke University where he was doing his research.

Abhijit Mahto’s body was found in a pool of blood by local guardian Shyamal Majumdar when he entered the 29-year-old’s apartment on Anderson Street in Durham, North Carolina, last morning, Abhijit’s father Sitaram said from Gamharia, Jamshedpur, where the family lives.

“On Friday, Majumdar called Abhijit but didn’t get a response. Majumdar didn’t try again thinking he must be busy studying since his exams were round the corner. The next morning (Saturday), he went to the apartment and, when Abhijit did not answer the knocks, pushed the door open to find my son lying on his bed. He had been murdered a day ago,” Sitaram said.

Abhijit didn’t stay alone in the apartment but his roommate, from Rajasthan, was away attending a wedding in India when the murder took place, Sitaram added.

Abhijit’s mother Arati, the last from the family to have spoken to the young man when he called on Wednesday, fainted when Majumdar broke the news of the death.

“Like always, his mother talked about marriage but my son skirted the issue, saying he would consider the matter at the end of this year,” Sitaram said.

The Duke University website said Durham police were yet to establish the motive behind the murder and that a probe was on.

Abhijit’s grandfather Dhananjay Mahto, a former Congress MLA, said the university had promised all help. “We want the body of Abhijit brought back to Gamharia. He was the only son of his parents.”

The family is in touch with Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay, who has promised to help bring the body back home after the post-mortem on Monday.

“This is a tragic circumstance and we are doing everything possible to assist those who may be affected by it,” Larry Moneta, Duke’s vice-president for student affairs, was quoted as saying on the university’s website.

The murder came just a month after the December 13 killing of two Louisiana State University research students from Andhra Pradesh, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, in a flat near their campus.

Friends and teachers of the second-year student of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, where Abhijit was pursuing computational mechanics, said he made friends easily and had a passion for poetry and literature.

The young man identified himself as a Bengali and spoke nostalgically about Calcutta on the university’s website. “My upbringing was in Calcutta; the City of Joy, the city of intellectuals and much more. My native language is Bengali. We Bengalis have a very distinct and rich culture,” he said on the site.

Abhijit graduated in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University in 2001 before completing his MTech from IIT Kanpur in 2004. He was with GE’s global research centre in Bangalore for two years before going to the US. “He always had a smile. Our research team was particularly close to him,” Tod Laursen, Abhijit’s professor at Pratt School, was quoted by the website as saying during a meeting with team members today.

Timir Kanti Saha, head of Jadavpur University’s mechanical engineering department, remembered Abhijit as a “bright scholar”.

The department has been sending students for the past two years to the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, close to Duke, for summer training. Now, Saha has doubts. “I am wondering if we might stop it.”