The Sikdars’ house in Dum Dum. (Bhabatosh Chakraborty)

Calcutta, Aug. 18: A couple were burnt to death in their sleep early today, allegedly by a relative, following a dispute over selling the joint-family home to a promoter in a Dum Dum pocket that has witnessed a real estate boom in the past few years.

Zari trader Ganesh Sikdar, 55, and his wife Pushpa could not escape, nor could neighbours rescue them, as Ganesh’s sister-in-law Jharna had also allegedly set fire to the staircase leading to their second-floor room and bolted the room’s door from outside.

The couple’s college-going daughter Rinki, who was sleeping in a ground-floor room at the two-storey house, lodged a police complaint against Jharna, who lives in the same house.

The police said Jharna tried to kill herself by slashing her wrist with a knife when they arrived to arrest her.

Ganesh and Pushpa had opposed plans by Jharna and her husband Pradyut to sell the house and the five-cottah plot on which it stands to a promoter who apparently planned to build a four-storey block of flats there, the police said.

“Pradyut and Jharna wanted to sell the house immediately to a promoter who had offered them Rs 25 lakh but Ganesh had asked them to wait for sometime before taking the final call,” an officer at Dum Dum police station said.

The police are probing which realtor had offered money to Pradyut, who works as a cook in Muscat.

The officer said: “Preliminary investigations have revealed that Jharna poured kerosene over Ganesh and Pushpa while they were asleep around 1.30am and set them ablaze. She bolted the door from outside and also set the staircase on fire.

“Alerted by the couple’s cries for help, neighbours rushed to the house but could not climb up the burning stairs. They doused the blaze with buckets of water but by the time they reached upstairs, it was too late. Ganesh and Pushpa were taken to RG Kar Hospital, where they were declared dead on arrival.”

Kalyan Mukherjee, deputy commissioner with the detective department (Barrackpore commissionerate), said Jharna had confessed to the crime. She has been remanded in seven days’ police custody.

Neighbours said Surya Sen Pally, where the Sikdars’ house is located, had seen a real estate boom in recent years. Several residents have sold off their plots and houses to promoters. Many three to four-storey apartment buildings have come up in the area.

Residents said the market rate of land at Surya Sen Pally was around Rs 5 lakh a cottah, much lower than that in neighbouring areas such as Math Kol and Kali Mandir.