A family out on a midnight drive through New Town on Sunday had one of their car windows smashed with an unidentified weapon while trying to evade a group of men who had attempted to waylay the vehicle.

Businessman Saurav Bhartia, 35, was at the wheel of his red i20 when he saw four to five men blocking the way near the approach to the Rajarhat Expressway flyover, a shout away from Axis Mall.

Saurav slowed down and steered right to get past the roadblock, only to find one of the men grabbing and trying to hold on to the handle of the left rear door. The next thing he knew, there was the sound of glass being shattered.

"I have no idea how that happened.... It might have been a bullet or an iron rod, I don't know what," he told Metro.

The businessman and his wife, who was seated next to him, turned around to see their five-year-old son bleeding from the nose and shards of glass all over his clothes. "My wife's friend and her son were also in the backseat. The kid had a cut on his head and was crying loudly. I knew we had to get away and stepped on the accelerator," Saurav, who deals in steel-casting products, recounted.

The boys received medical attention at a private hospital off VIP Road before the family drove back home early on Monday, still shaken by what had happened a few hours earlier.

The scariest part of their ordeal is that it occurred on a stretch of road cutting through a township that is supposed to be the city's showcase.

Once a dark and desolate road that motorists would avoid late at night, Rajarhat Expressway is now properly illuminated and one of the preferred stretches for a long drive over the weekend. But the Bhartia family's Sunday scare has shown how lawlessness is festering beneath the cosmetic relief of a boulevard with glowing lights and gardens. "It is my favourite place for a fun drive and almost every weekend we take that road after dinner somewhere. I know several others who do the same," said Saurav, a resident of Space Town along VIP Road.

His son Vivaan remains in shock. "I had dozed off and suddenly it felt like several needles had pricked me. I woke up to find glass all over my body. My mother asked me not to move till she had removed the glass pieces. I was already bleeding from my nose," recalled the Class I student of St. James' School.

Saurav lodged a complaint with New Town police station on Monday afternoon, pointing out that the incident occurred between the New Town bus stand and the flyover along Axis Mall.

There is a fuel station in the vicinity that remains open till 2am, besides the Novotel and Pride hotels that mostly cater to business travellers.

Asked whether the stretch wasn't under CCTV surveillance, an officer at New Town police station said he had sent a team to "survey the place of the attack".

Metro did not find any CCTV camera in the location mentioned by Saurav. The nearest camera is installed at the fuel station around 100 metres away. Employees of the Indian Oil pump said they did not notice any unusual activity on Sunday.

Saurav described those who had tried to his stop his car as a "group of four to five men in jeans and shirts". Two of them were holding something in their hands that could be sticks or rods, he said.

Saurav and his family had dined out with a friend of his wife and her son and were returning together when they ran into trouble.

"The kids were panicking and so was my wife. I had no clue what had happened and why the men attacked us. So I dialled 100 and informed the police about the attack. A team from Baguiati police station met us at Charnock Hospital, where the kids were being treated," he said.

The cops took Saurav back to the spot in their vehicle, but there was no trace of the men who had attacked the car. "I drive through New Town regularly and the police's presence seems to have thinned in the past three weeks. I used to see police vehicles parked along the road or patrolling the area but that has changed," the businessman said on Monday.

Metro had highlighted on May 13 how roads in Calcutta have become unsafe since the elections because of a lower police presence. Police sources admitted that the crackdown on drink driving, helmet-less biking and speeding had eased, resulting in a spurt in accidents and rowdies roaming carefree at night.