An elderly woman and her daughter were charred to death when a fire broke out on the first floor of a three-storey building in Parnasree on Saturday afternoon.

Police said Soma Mitra, 68, and her daughter Kakoli Mitra, 42, were found on the first-floor with their room locked from inside around 12.30pm on Saturday. They were declared dead at hospital.

Hirak Kumar Ghosh, the son of Mitra’s sister, said he and his wife live on the ground floor of the building, their ancestral property, on Dwijen Mukherjee Road, not far from Behala crossing. His aunt (Mitra) and cousin (Kakoli) lived on the first floor, Ghosh said.

Mitra and her daughter used to live in an apartment complex elsewhere in Behala and they had shifted to the building to live with the Ghoshes after the death of Kakoli’s brother a year ago, a family member said.

“My cousin was terminally ill. After he passed away, my aunt and cousin shifted to this building and started living with my mother on the first floor,” Ghosh told The Telegraph.

Ghosh’s mother was not at home and had gone to Kalighat to meet a priest to organise a puja at home when the fire happened.

Police said the room where the mother-daughter were found dead was locked from inside and there was the smell of kerosene in the room suggesting it could have triggered the fire.

Two fire tenders were used to douse the flames. “No suicide note has been found. The room was locked from inside and we had to break open the door to get inside. We are still to ascertain if it was an accident or a suicide,” an officer of Parnasree police station said.

A forensic team will visit the spot to collect samples. Their report will help cops know the origin of the fire, the police said.

People in the neighbourhood said they were alerted by a smell like that of rubber burning. As they started searching for its source, they spotted thick fumes coming out of the building’s first floor.

“We tried to go upstairs but could not initially as the staircase was in flames… it was impossible for us to proceed,” Ghosh, who works in Alipore court, said.

Later, fire officers used hose pipes to douse the flames and broke open the door to reach the room where the women were found dead.