‘Baba kothay?’: RG Kar lift victim Arup Banerjee’s four-year-old son awaits his father’s return
Telegraph | 24 March 2026
Arup Banerjee’s son, who will turn four soon, has been looking for his father since Saturday, after he returned home with his mother.
Ayush, Arup’s son, underwent surgery on his right hand at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on Friday morning, a few hours after his father’s death and returned to his home at Jawpur Road, Dum Dum, on Saturday afternoon.
“Baba kothay? Kokhon ashbe? (Where is my father? When will he return?),” Ayush has been asking his mother and others. He has been told that his father would return soon, a family member said.
Ayush, who had suffered a fracture in his right arm while playing at his home on Thursday, goes to a local playschool in Dum Dum.
Ayush is also telling people how he saw his father “falling through the lift’s shaft.”
“Whenever he sees a family member crying, he says his father fell through the lift’s shaft,” the family member said.
Ayush last saw his father standing behind him, stuck between the elevator gate and a grille gate in the lift lobby, which prevented them from getting out of the lift at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on Friday.
“We have not told Ayush about his father’s death,” said a relative at their Jawpur home on Sunday morning.
On Friday, Arup, along with his wife Sonali and son Ayush, got trapped in a lift that was said to have malfunctioned. They managed to exit the lift door in the basement, but could not escape because the lift lobby was locked with a grille gate that prevented anyone from leaving that lift.
After some time, as someone in the hospital tried to operate the lift to rescue the family, the man was trapped between the doors and was dragged up, causing fatal injuries.
Sonali, who her family said was “inconsolable”, had received injuries on the face.
Neighbours said they were ready to help the bereaved family in every possible way.