A man who tried to resist a heist in his house was slashed with a razor several times by the thief.
As Prosenjit Chatterjee, 35, struggled to subjugate the thief, his sister, Pinky, 38, joined the fight and tripped him with a foot. Once the thief hit the floor, he was overpowered. She, too, was injured with the razor, police said.
The incident happened in a congested Kalighat neighbourhood of south Kolkata early on Friday.
Preliminary investigation by the police and the CCTV footage recovered from an adjacent house suggested that one of the tenants, who lives in the same building, had allegedly helped the thief enter the house.
The tenant allegedly waited for a resident of the house, who goes out for some work around 3.45am every day, to open the main door.
The building in Jadu Bhattacharya Lane has a common entrance, which all occupants of the four-storey house, use.
Dipankar Chatterjee, 45, who lives on the third floor with his family, told The Telegraph that his cousin Prosenjit, who was the first to confront the thief, had received 48 stitches all over his body.
Prosenjit, his mother Ratna, 70, aunt Dipa Chakraborty, 65, and Pinky live on the ground floor. Several tenants also live in the building.
“My aunt woke up in the morning and saw a stranger standing outside her room. She started to scream,” Dipankar said. Her screams alerted other family members.
“Prosenjit’s pounced on the man without realising that he was armed with a razor. He slashed Prosenjit at random,” said Dipankar.
However, as it was becoming difficult for him to hold on to the man, Pinky used her leg to trip the man to the floor and helped her brother overpower the man.
“By this time, I had also come down from the third floor. The man was handed over to the police,” Dipankar said.
The family’s pet dog Rocky started barking which alerted the neighbours who rushed in for help.
The ‘insider’ who was spotted helping the thief was identified as Samrat Chatterjee, one of the tenants. He was arrested from the house.
