The CISF assistant sub-inspector who was killed in firing by a colleague at Indian Museum on Saturday lived with his wife at a rented apartment in Kudghat on the city’s southern fringes and was known to neighbours as a reticent man who only exchanged pleasantries with them.
Neighbours said Ranjit Kumar Sarangi, 58, a native of Dhenkanal in Odisha, used to leave for work on his motorcycle early in the morning and return home late at night.
He had taken the ground floor apartment in a two-storey building on Banerjeepara Road in Kudghat’s Pashchim Putiary on rent a couple of years back.
CISF personnel were guarding the Kudghat apartment on Sunday morning. Neighbours said the CISF people had arrived on Saturday evening. His wife left for Odisha, accompanied by CISF personnel, on Sunday afternoon.
Sarangi suffered fatal bullet injuries on Saturday evening when CISF head constable Akshay Kumar Mishra, 43, fired from an AK-47 outside the paramilitary force’s barracks on the Indian Museum premises on JL Nehru Road.
Sources said Mishra had snatched the rifle from head constable S.K. Morthi after the roll call and tried to shoot a CISF officer. But Sarangi and assistant commandant Subir Ghosh came in between and got hit. Ghosh dived to the ground immediately and saved himself but Sarangi came directly in the line of fire, the sources said.
Ghosh, 59, from Alaipur in Nadia district’s Chakdah town, was discharged from SSKM Hospital, where he was admitted after the firing, on Sunday.
Ghosh, once a footballer, had joined CISF during the late-1980s on sports quota and served in many places across the country. A former student of the Ramkrishna Mission school in Rahara and City College, he got posted in Kolkata two years ago following promotion and stays at his official residence on Park Street with his wife Priyanka.
The couple’s only son Sudipta works in Bangalore. He flew to Kolkata on Sunday morning on hearing news of the firing. Tapash Bose, a neighbour of Sarangi, said: “He spoke very little but was always polite. We only exchanged pleasantries. None of us knew him closely.”
Sumanta Nath, a relative of the owner of the building where Sarangi and his wife lived, said his two schoolgoing sons stayed in their native place in Odisha. “He hardly interacted with us,” Nath said. Sarangi’s body was taken to Odisha for the last rites.
Ghosh, the injured CISF assistant commandant, told reporters while leaving SSKM Hospital that Mishra had no grudge against him. He said Mishra fired “instantly”.
“It is unbelievable that dada could harm or humiliate anybody. He is a very disciplined person.” said Saroj Kumar Ghosh, younger brother of the injured assistant commandant. “As far as I know dada never had any problem with colleagues... even after his promotion he never had any tiff with his subordinates. He is quite popular in his battalion.”
