Kolkata: Four families from Kolkata who went on holiday together in the Sunderbans, West Bengal were attacked by armed men, shot at and robbed at the tourist lodge they were staying in early this morning.
14 hours after the attack, the police have arrested four local men in connection with the incident. Some of the stolen goods have also been recovered, say sources.
Earlier Firhad Hakim, state Minister for Urban Development, said Bangladeshi criminals were behind the incident and blamed the Centre for it. The Border Security Force (BSF) - which is under the Centre - was failing to prevent Bangladeshi criminals from crossing into Bengal and committing such crimes, he said.
But the tourists had said the three men who attacked them spoke Hindi.
According to the traumatised tourists who are now back in Kolkata, at around 1.45 am today, at least three men climbed on to the first floor balcony of the Piyali tourist lodge and broke down the door of the room occupied by Mihir Chatterjee, his wife and daughter.
One man pointed a gun at Mr Chatterjee, another hit him with a rod and demanded his wife to hand over all valuables. "Jo bhi hai, de do," the men shouted at her in Hindi. She promptly did so.
Their friend Sudipta Basu Thakur, who was occupying the next room, heard the noise and raised an alarm. The three men broke down the door to his room. Mr Thakur tried to grapple with one of the men when another man shot him, in the arm and on his neck.
As he fell to the floor bleeding, his wife started screaming for help. The men jumped off the first floor balcony and fled.
"All this happened in the dark," said Sanghamitra, Mr Thakur's wife.
"I dialled 100 for police help but got no response. I then phoned my brother in Kolkata who called the police who arrived at the spot half an hour later," she said.
Kakoli Basu, who was also a part of the group of four families on holiday, was occupying a ground floor room and was terrorised after hearing the gun shots upstairs.
"I will never go back to the Sunderbans again," she said. "There is no security whatsoever. The children are traumatised."
Mr Chaterjee said that the men were armed with a gun, a knife and an iron rod. "The gun was a proper pistol and not a crude pipe gun," he said. His family was robbed of Rs 75,000 worth of valuables.
Ms Kakoli Basu said there were policemen having dinner at the tourist logde last night at the same time as the four families. When they were later asked where they had gone off, the police allegedly said they had gone on a raid.