Smashed plates lay strewn on the drawing room floor on Tuesday afternoon.

They bore telltale signs of the brief resistance that Sonali Biswas, 43, had put up before being overpowered by two men who robbed her Moore Avenue home in Tollygunge on Monday evening.

The men, who Sonali suspect were hiding on the landing of the stairs that lead to the floor above, followed her into her flat before she could sense trouble and bolt the door from inside. This was moments after 6.45pm, when she came back to her flat and opened the lock to get in.

Over the next 40-odd minutes, Sonali was pushed around, tied and gagged, lest she raised the alarm. The intruders left with “eight to 10 pieces of gold jewellery” that was kept in the house for an upcoming wedding.

All of this happened less than 200m from Regent Park police station. “We are also surprised by the nature and timing of the robbery. Something like this has not happened here in a long time,” an officer of Regent Park police station told this newspaper on Tuesday.

If the cops were surprised, several residents of the area had shivers running down their spine.

An elderly woman, a neighbour of the Biswases, opened the doors of her flat just a tiny bit when Metro rang the bell. “I don’t know anything. Please let me be,” she said, fear writ large on her face.

The door and collapsible gates of the Biswas home were also locked.

Sonali’s husband, Piklu Biswas, did not open the collapsible gates. “We are shell shocked. Please ask whatever you have to from where you are,” he told this correspondent from inside.

“When I returned home around 8.15pm yesterday, I found my wife in the bedroom, her hands and feet tied and a piece of cloth stuffed into her mouth. She was in a lot of pain,” Piklu, a central government employee, told Metro.

Sonali, who could barely speak, said the two men attacked her from behind. “I was pushed. They threatened to kill me if I did not tell them where the gold was,” she said.

The men wore T-shirts like gig workers, Piklu quoted his wife as saying.

The two-storey apartment has a gym on the ground floor. The Dassani Studio and the Tollygunge Sambodhi Buddhist Monastery are a stone’s throw from the building.

“I still cannot believe something like this happened here. Ours is a peaceful neighbourhood. There are so many shops around. How come nobody noticed anything?” asked Arati Laha, an elderly woman who was out for a walk on Tuesday evening.

A phuchka seller sets up a stall right at the gates of the apartment every evening, said residents of the area.

When Metro visited the apartment, there was no one at the gates and one could reach the staircase and lift without being stopped even once.

The road is dotted with standalone apartments and homes. As Moore Avenue turns towards NSC Bose Road, one passes multiple gated communities.

The road has multiple CCTV cameras. “We are scanning the footage but are still looking for leads,” said the police officer.