The son of a daily wage earner from Satragachi near Kolkata, Ghosh had joined the State Armed Police just 16 months ago, nine months of which were spent in the jungles training and guarding a police camp in Bankura. Yesterday, the jawan returned home, his head beheaded, his hands chopped off and with multiple wounds on his torso. He was 23, and the only earning member of his family.

Ghosh was abducted by Maoists from the Satnala camp in Bankura and is believed to have been killed on January 25-26. His mother Pratima can’t get over the shock of the sight of his body. “You need not strike so many times and so brutally to kill a man. I don’t know who the Maoists are and what they are fighting for. How could they kill a poor family’s son, our only support?” she sobs. “It did not resemble a human body,” mumbles Bera.

Father Tapan Ghosh, who used to work as a contract labourer at construction sites, had only recently taken a break after Sanjoy got the job. At 63, he may have to return to the job again. While two of his daughters are married, he has to still marry the youngest, 27-year-old Rupa. It was Rupa who last spoke to Sanjoy on January 25 evening. “I spoke to him at 7.30 pm. He could talk only briefly, saying he was going out on duty and would call later,” says Rupa. Next day afternoon, the family came to know he had died from television. Family members say they hadn’t been told he had been abducted, nor if the Maoists had put forth any demands.

Rupa still remembers the toil Sanjoy put in to get into the State Armed Police. “For three years, he got up early in the morning and went to the nearby ground to practise. We did not have any money to support his studies after Class X, so he got enrolled at a technical training institute in Belur for an electrician’s course. He used to cycle all the way to Belur.”

Sanjoy last came home on January 12, in fact, to appear for a diploma examination for his electrician’s course and had promised to return in February. There were other promises he made, remembers his father, small promises that looked possible in the certainty of a government job. “Every monsoon, the small room in our house would go under water. Water would also seep in from the holes in the ceiling. Sanjoy used to say he would repair those soon,” he says.