Burdwan, March 30: A sanyasi today allegedly hacked to death a 15-year-old boy after being teased about his relationship with a sanyasini who runs an ashram in a Burdwan village.

When villagers alerted by 15-year-old Sukdeb Mondal’s screams for help landed at the ashram, the sanyasi was said to be standing with a blood-dripping bonti and the boy was lying at his feet.

At Bikehat village in Katwa, about 160km from Calcutta, a mob went berserk after that, beating up the sanyasi, setting ablaze parts of the ashram and stoning police.

The sanyasi, Shyamal Biswas, 28, was rescued by the police and arrested. “He has confessed to the murder. He told us that Sukdeb frequently teased him over a romantic relationship between him and the woman who ran the ashram. When Sukdeb teased him again this morning, he took a bonti from the kitchen and killed him,” said subdivisional police officer Jyotirmoy Roy.

The Class IX student’s father Shyamal Mondal, a marginal farmer, has lodged a comp- laint alleging that the sanyasi murdered his son after the boy saw the man in a compromising position with the sanyasini. “We have detained the 36-year-old sanyasini for interrogation,” said district police chief R. Rajsekharan.

A sanyasi called Sukdeb Brahmachari had founded the ashram about 50 years ago.