1. Sharbani Paul and her husband Manabendra in a photograph from the family album. 2. Sharbani’s parental house (facing arrow) in Barrackpore, where she had met her alleged killer five years ago. 3. The spot (facing arrow) on the air force ground, barely a kilometre away, where the alleged killer fired around 10 bullets and claimed three lives. 4. The house of suspect Pijush Ghosh at Sagarpara in Murshidabad’s Jalangi. The blue door, to its side, is the one the family uses as the main entrance. Standing in front of it with his back to the camera on Sunday evening is Pijush’s elder brother (facing arrow). Pictures by Amit Datta and Julfikar Ali

A young cop allegedly besotted with a married woman reached her door with a gun slung on his shoulder and later shot her dead along with her husband and sister-in-law, leaving two children orphaned and the police force red-faced.

The trigger for the 8.30am Sunday shooting at Barrackpore, on the outskirts of the city, was allegedly a failed relationship between the absconding constable, 26-year-old Pijush Kanti Ghosh, and victim Sharbani Paul, 36.

The other two victims — Sharbani’s husband of 10 years, 40-year-old Manabendra, and sister-in-law Rohini Roy, 45, — were trying to convince the cop to leave them alone when he fired 10 rounds at them at a ground owned by the Indian Air Force in Barrackpore.

Sharbani and Manabendra, a clerk at the Ichhapore Gun and Shell Factory, died where they fell. Rohini succumbed to her injuries at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

Pijush, who didn’t return to his barracks after completing duty at the Latbagan police lines in Barrackpore on Saturday night, was apparently in love with Sharbani from the time he was a tenant at her mother’s house in Barrackpore five years ago.

Sharbani’s mother Shikha Sarkar confirmed that Pijush, then a student, was her tenant and that he came to know her daughter during her occasional visits home.

“But his character wasn’t good. So I asked him to leave my house after a few months. That was the last I saw of that man. How was I to know that he would resurface to destroy my daughter’s family?” she cried.

Investigators said Sharbani was alone at her rented home in Palta, barely 3km away from her mother’s house, when Pijush knocked on her door early on Sunday. Police quoted neighbours as saying that the constable had visited her several times since she, Manabendra and their children — a son, 9, and a daughter, 5 — shifted there around three months ago.

“Manabendra was about to complete his night shift at Ichhapore and the couple’s children were with their grandmother when Pijush reached their house and insisted that Sharbani leave her family for him. He apparently threatened to drag her away, prompting her to call her husband,” an officer said.

Manabendra first telephoned his elder sister Rohini, a resident of Ichhapore, and then his wife’s younger brother Bibhash Sarkar to ask them to rush to Sharbani’s rescue. By the time the duo reached the Palta house, Manabendra was also on the way home from his Ichhapore workplace.

According to the police, Manabendra reached home around 7.45am and found Pijush shouting at the top of his voice about his alleged five-year relationship with Sharbani and how she was trying to disown him to save her reputation.

“Manabendra pleaded with Pijush to leave, at which he suggested that the couple accompany him somewhere else if they wanted to discuss the matter in private,” the police said, quoting a witness.

Bibhash said his sister, brother-in-law and Rohini soon boarded an autorickshaw along with the armed constable to reach the air force field, around a kilometre away from the Palta house. Bibhash, his friend and Rohini’s son Samiran followed on two motorcycles.

Several residents of the area told the police that they saw the victims arguing with the constable as they walked towards the centre of the airforce field, followed by Bibhash and the rest. It is not known whether Pijush had murder on his mind or whether anything that the victims said provoked him into pulling the trigger.

“One moment they were talking and the very next second Pijush was pointing his rifle at my sister and brother-in-law. I froze. It was such a horrible scene.... my sister and brother-in-law slumped to the ground but I was too scared to go near them; so I ran,” Bibhash, 18, told Metro.

Nobody dared stop Pijush from fleeing. The police said the runaway constable probably had around 40 more bullets left in the two magazines — each contains around 25 — he was carrying.

Several minutes went by before the witnesses returned to the ground, by which time two of the three victims were dead. Sharbani and her husband were shot in the chest while Rohini was bleeding profusely from her right leg. She died in hospital of blood loss, an officer at Barrackpore police station said.

Pijush’s elder brother Aloke, a resident of Sagarpara in Murshidabad, said he came to know of his brother’s obsession with a married woman two months ago. “He told me that he was in love with Sharbani and that he wanted to marry her. I advised him to stop thinking about her.”

“Pijush is the youngest of us four brothers. We had such high hopes of him (Pijush). Another of my siblings (Amit Ghosh) is a constable with the state police force,” Aloke, a farmer, said.

Mother Renuka has been inconsolable since hearing the news about her son being on the run after the shooting.

Arijit Mandal, a roommate of Pijush at the police barracks, said he would hardly interact with anyone. “He would be mostly on his cellphone,” the constable recalled.

The police are going through Pijush’s cellphone call records to find out if he was in touch with Sharbani.