A Class X student was stabbed to death by a youth in Nadia district on Friday night for rejecting his advances and choosing to focus on her studies.

The 16-year-old Anushka Mondal’s killing is a chilling reminder of the recent murder of a young girl in Krishnanagar by her obsessed classmate-turned-fiancé.

Anushka, a resident of Shyamnagar in Birnagar town, was attacked with a sharp weapon on Friday night. The accused is 19-year-old Subha Mondal, a higher secondary dropout and son of a migrant worker.

He allegedly intercepted the girl on the way to a neighbour’s house and dragged her to a secluded spot before stabbing her repeatedly. Her throat was slit and the body was later found near a pond, soaked in blood with multiple stab wounds.

Anushka, the elder of two siblings, was preparing for next year’s Madhyamik examination.

According to police and family members, she left home around 7.30pm to call her younger sister from a neighbour’s house but never returned. Her family and villagers launched a frantic search and her body was found near the pond, 500m away from her home, around 11.30pm.

The family members said they grew suspicious when Anushka failed to return home by 8.15pm, the time she usually left for her tuition. Neighbours later noticed bloodstains and scratch marks on Subha’s hands and called the police.

“The blood marks and nail scratches on Subha made us suspicious. We called the police, who detained him, and within half an hour, Anushka’s body was spotted near the pond,” a villager said.

Her mother, Anjana Mondal, said: “Subha became our instant suspicion since he had been stalking my daughter for a long time and often threatened her with dire consequences if she rejected his proposal. My daughter was not at all interested in any relationship and was devoted to her studies. But he made her life hell as he used to make indecent proposals and block her way whenever she
stepped out.”

An inconsolable Anjana, whose husband Tapas Mondal works at a jewellery shop in Birnagar, said: “It was beyond my imagination that Subha, who just crossed his teenage years and grew up almost together with my daughter as a neighbour, could kill her. I told him several times to stay away as she dreamt of continuing her studies, but he ended her life abruptly.”

The police arrested Subha based on the family’s complaint and produced him in the additional chief judicial magistrate’s court in Ranaghat. The youth was remanded in police custody for seven days.

The investigators said the accused confessed during preliminary interrogation that he had killed Anushka for rejecting proposal.

The gruesome incident comes less than a month after 19-year-old Ishita Mullik of Krishnanagar was shot dead by her former classmate and lover, Deshraj, after she broke off their relationship. On August 24, Deshraj stormed her house with a firearm and killed her in cold blood.

Such back-to-back tragedies have raised alarm over a disturbing pattern, as some clinical psychologists have noticed.

“Young men, unable to handle rejection and consumed by obsession, are resorting to extreme violence. What was once thought of as adolescent infatuation has increasingly turned deadly, with some not hesitating even to kill a girl simply because she dared to say no,” said a psychologist.