KOLKATA: Techie Saptadip Sanyal was on the terrace of his building, speaking on a conference call, when he suddenly saw policemen running around with guns outside his building.
Maitreyee Sen was taking a break from her work from home schedule, scrolling through Facebook, when she was jolted by a loud gunshot bang.
Sutirtha Pramanik hurried out of the bathroom on hearing gunshots and ran to the balcony.
Gun-toting cops rebuked him and told him to go inside immediately.
For residents of Shukhobrishti complex in New Town, scenes from Bollywood encounter movies and the last episode of current OTT bigwig ‘Family Man 2’ came alive on Wednesday afternoon as they witnessed a shootout between police and gangsters.
Two of the most-wanted criminals from Punjab were shot down, while one policeman was injured.
“The sound of bullets is still ringing in my ears.
The firing went on and on and I lost count of the bullets that were shot.
I shut all the doors and windows, as instructed by the cops, and sat beside the balcony.
It had possibly lasted for only 10 minutes but it felt like a lifetime,” said Pramanik, who lives in the building opposite the scene of the encounter on Wednesday.
According to sources, a team of officers conducted a recce of the complex around 1pm.
Around 3pm, a team of plainclothesmen stationed themselves outside eight buildings surrounding B-153, the building where the gangsters had been staying on rent, and by 3.30pm, the operation began.
Sen, who lives a building away, said she was scrolling though Facebook, when she heard the gunshots.
From the balcony, she found the road outside empty with some gun-toting cops making a dash, yelling at people to stay indoors.
“Within moments, information and questions started flooding our Telegram group about the gunshot.
It was very scary.
The fact that we were living with gangsters scared the life out of me,” she said.
In the Manoj Bajpai-starrer ‘Family Man 2’, the protagonist is seen entering a flat of a residential complex in Mumbai to rescue his kidnapped daughter by terrorists, when two of the accused manage to escape.
The next scene shows the cops chasing the gangsters around the residential complex, the two sides shooting at each other.
The residents look from balconies and windows as the two gangsters are shot down.
At Shukhobrishti, residents were spared the horror of watching the gangsters being killed but many saw the cop, who was injured by a bullet, being helped away by two of his colleagues.
“I had no clue what was happening and wondered about so many armed men in our complex.
Then I heard gunshots, which sounded like crackers initially.
But then I saw a cops being taken away by his colleagues to a police jeep.
He seemed in a lot of pain and then, the gunshots escalated.
I have never seen anything like this and will never forget this day,” said Saptadip Sanyal, who lives next to the shootout site.
“I still can’t digest that we had been sharing space with gangsters and that a shootout broke out here.
I am still trembling.
I thought living in a gated communities was safe.
After Wednesday, I feel disillusioned,” said Priyanka Sengupta, who has been living in the complex on rent for the past three years.