A woman who stepped on a cornice on the eighth floor of her apartment building in Lake Avenue to rescue her pet cat lost her balance and fell to her death on Monday morning.
The cat was one of the three she had at her home, police said.
Anjana Das, 36, lived with her mother on the first floor of the nine-storeyed building at 70 Lake Avenue. They had shifted to the address a few months ago as their home on Sarat Bose Road was undergoing renovation.
Her mother has told the police that Anjana used to offer private tuition.
When Metro visited the Lake Avenue apartment on Monday, she was inconsolable and refused to talk. A youth in the house requested privacy.
An officer at Tollygunge police station said Anjana had three pet cats at home, two of which went missing on Sunday evening.
“Late at night, one of the cats was found but the other was still missing,” said the officer.
On Monday morning, Anjana went to the terrace for her morning walk where she reportedly spotted her missing cat.
The police quoted an eyewitness as saying that Anjana saw the cat jump over the parapet and settle on a cornice on the eighth floor of the building. “Anjana crossed over the parapet and landed on the cornice. The eyewitness, a woman who takes care of an elderly resident of a flat on the top floor, said she tried to stop Anjana from slipping into the cornice. But Anjana did not listen to her,” an officer said.
The cornice, barely one-and-a-half-feet wide, could not accommodate the woman and she got disbalanced and crashed on the ground.
Her fall was broken as she hit multiple cornices. By the time she landed on the ground, she had suffered multiple injuries and was bleeding profusely.
“She (the eyewitness) said the cat got scared as the woman fell and jumped back on the parapet to safety,” the officer said.
Anjana was taken to hospital, where she was declared dead. Neighbours said the mother and the daughter were new in the locality and would rarely mingle with others.
“They had shifted here recently. We did not get a chance to mix with them. They would rarely come out,” said a neighbour.
The building from where Anjana fell has an identical tower in the complex. She fell between the two towers.
There have been incidents where love for pets has driven the owners to do things they would otherwise refrain from doing.
Last April, a 55-year-old homemaker, Rupali Gangopadhyay, had scaled an 8ft-high wall to rescue a six-month-old kitten named Kurkure, who had strayed out of its owner’s house on Ashwini Dutta Road off Triangular Park. She, however, had sought the help of the Disaster Management Group of the police to scale the wall.