Police officers accompanying the boy said he was calm and composed on his way to court. “I repent the fact that I could not kill them,” he allegedly told the officers. The 14-year-old had attacked his grandparents and aunt with a machete on Monday afternoon.

None of the relatives of the 14-year-old, who is a sports freak, had any inkling that for the past three months all that the boy thought about was taking revenge for his father, Rana Pratap Ghosh’s, death. On Monday, he went to his grandparents house at Chetla Road for the first time since his father died.

Ghosh had moved out of the Chetla house with his wife Sanchita and their two children after an argument.

“It is likely that from a tender age, the boy realised that his parents and grandparents were not on good terms. After his father’s death, he did not let anyone realise that he was broken from inside,” said the boy’s maternal Aunt Dolly Biswas.

“His father had bought him a computer for his 14th birthday in July. He had promised to gift him a bicycle if he did well in his final exams,” she added.

On the other hand, a relative from the boy’s paternal side said: “They were a happy family until the boy’s mother destroyed it all. She provoked the boy by holding his grandparents responsible for his father’s death.”

“On Sunday night he was watching a Feluda movie with me, did his homework and went to bed after dinner,” said the boy’s maternal grandmother Hena Rani Debi.

Family members said he was a weak child, born with a hole in his heart. He underwent an open heart surgery in 2000, after which he took active interest in sports. He learnt swimming and cricket after school and had enrolled for judo classes also.

He was an introvert and a very determined boy. “He never wept after his father’s death. But we have often seen him staring at his father’s photograph and weeping quietly,” said Dolly Biswas.