The teenaged couple lived on the terrace of this Dum Dum Park building. Picture by Amit Datta

An underage couple who had eloped three months ago jumped to their death from the terrace of a five-storeyed building on Sunday after quarrelling the previous night.

An elderly morning walker who witnessed the twin suicides at Dum Dum Park said the girl, 15-year-old Sumana Mondol, was the first to take the step around 6.30am.

“I heard a thud and turned back to find a girl in a blue salwar lying in a pool of blood, with the lower half of her body inside a drain. A boy in a T-shirt and shorts came running down the staircase, let out a shriek on seeing the body and went back into the building. The next thing I knew he was on the edge of the terrace. I was dumbstruck and couldn’t do a thing (to save him),” Pronab Banerjee, 79, told Metro.

Babai Paul, 17, was critically injured in the fall — he hit an eucalyptus tree before landing on the ground — and died at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in the afternoon.

Sumana and Babai had married at Dakshineswar temple on August 24 when their parents, family friends for years, were on a pilgrimage to Tarapeeth. The couple then moved into a terrace room owned by Babai’s mother Swati at Niyati Apartments in Dum Dum Park.

Neighbours said Babai, who did not study after passing Madhyamik, and Sumana, who had dropped out in Class VIII, found the going tough after marriage because neither had a source of income. They would often quarrel.

“They argued last night, too, and that might have led the girl to commit suicide. The boy followed suit,” an officer at Lake Town police station said.

Babai’s father Sanjib Paul, who owns a shop selling imitation jewellery, used to support the couple. “After staying aloof for a few weeks, the boy’s parents had accepted their union and allowed them to stay in that terrace room,” the officer said.

But Gour Mondol, Sumana’s trader father, hadn’t come to terms with his daughter’s act of running away from home with a family friend’s son until she called him last week to ask for forgiveness.

Tapas Ghosh, one of Sumana’s cousins, said her “husband” had been torturing her. “He didn’t have a source of income and was frustrated. Sumana had complained that Babai snatched her cellphone and assaulted her a few weeks ago.”

Babai’s parents, who live in Jyangra, disputed the allegations.