Kolkata: Arup Banerjee, his wife Sonali and son Ayush had squeezed themselves on the narrow strip of floor, no more than 4ft ×1ft, their back pressed against a slightly ajar lift door and their face wedged against a collapsible gate installed just outside the lift door when the elevator began to move upwards. As the lift went up, Sonali and Ayush were unable to hold their balance on the narrow ledge and fell into the pit. However, Arup was dragged up when the lift began its ascent before it again came to a stop. Several minutes later, a limp Arup came crashing down and fell into the pit.Recounting the horror to ABP Ananda on Saturday, Sonali said she had even feared the lift would come down and crush her and her three-year-old son. Sonali had the presence of mind to lift her son so that he could regain his footing and asked him to hold on to the collapsible gate till help arrived. But before help had come, Arup’s nearly lifeless body had come crashing down on her. “The lift kept going up and down before it finally stopped at the pitch dark basement. The lift door opened on its own, but only partially,” the dengue worker with South Dum Dum Municipality told the TV channel.When they noticed a narrow space between the lift and the collapsible gate, the trio wriggled out of the elevator, with a portion of Arup’s body inside the lift. “My husband said let us wait outside the lift till help comes. But the lift started moving up on its own and dragged my husband up as half of his body was trapped in the narrow gap between the lift doors,” she recounted. When the lift started moving up, the mother-son duo lost balance and fell into the shaft. “The lift just went a bit up and stopped on its own, and my husband fell in the shaft. Covered in blood, he was still alive and panting. I reminded my son to hold the collapsible grille tightly, thinking that if anything happened to us, someone would rescue him,” she said.
