A research scholar was allegedly abused and threatened by members of a club in Hooghly's Uttarpara on Saturday night after she protested against a Kali puja being held blocking a road in front of her apartment block.

"The pandal of Bhadrakali Friends' Club has blocked almost the entire road. Only a foot-wide gap has been left for people to pass through," said the 25-year-old.

The woman, who said she was doing PhD in astrophysics at Presidency University, has lodged an FIR against Mridul Rej and Amalesh Bhattacharya, the president and vice-president of the club, respectively.

The club members have lodged a counter-FIR against the scholar and her father.

Trouble broke out when the woman was returning home to Uttarpara's Makalpara on cycle around 10.30pm on Kali Puja.

She is nursing an elbow injury and found it difficult to pass through the narrow gap. "I decided to pass through the pandal," she said.

However, when she entered the pandal, a club member allegedly stopped her. "He rudely asked me why I had entered the pandal with the bicycle. He grabbed my cycle and pulled it," the woman said.

By then other members of the club had gathered around the spot. The woman told them they had illegally blocked the road.

"The members told me they did whatever they thought proper and would have taught me a lesson had I been a man," she said.

The scholar then called her father, who rushed to the pandal. "I asked them why they were behaving like that. They abused and pushed me. One of them threatened to kill me," the father said.

The woman's mother and 78-year-old grandfather rushed downstairs and intervened. They managed to free the woman and her father from the mob.

"While we were climbing up the stairs to our third-floor flat, some members followed us. They even tried to enter our flat but my mother locked the collapsible gate in time," said the woman. "When my father called Uttarpara police station, the officer who answered the call asked us to visit the police station and lodge an FIR."

She alleged that one of the club members followed them to the police station. In front of the officers he allegedly said that whatever the woman and her father were saying was false. "But the officers refused to listen to him and registered our FIR," she said.

Rej denied the allegations. "The woman was behaving rudely with us. She even pushed our elderly vice-president," Rej said. The police denied the woman's family had called them.