Mainak Sarkar, the man from a small town Durgapur in West Bengal, will be notoriously remembered for gunning down University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) professor William Klug of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering before taking his life. Before the college shooting incident, Sarkar had also killed his former wife.
The shooter is survived by his cat, Jiffy, who was found in his apartment, along with the ‘kill list’. However, one of his former professors, whom he had planned to kill was found unharmed.
That is what remains of him. He has left behind no memories and even back home, the people, place and Institute where he did his schooling and college have little or no recollection of UCLA gunman.
Sarkar completed his higher secondary education from a reputed school in Durgapur. An engineering aspirant, he joined the Bidhan Chandra Institution in the Steel City in 1994-95 to prepare for the Joint Entrance Examination. A faculty member from the coaching institute, said, “He joined the institute almost 20-22 years back, it is hard to recall Mainak. But I faintly remember, he was a soft-hearted boy.”
A bright and meritorious student, he cleared JEE in the first attempt and secured a seat at one of India’s premier technology institutes, Indian Institue of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp).
The gory incident at UCLA has sent shockwaves in his alma mater, even though most professors found nothing extraordinarily impressive about him. He had joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT-Kgp in 1996, and the professors and staff didn’t have an iota of recollection of a student by the name Sarkar. One of the professors from the Institute said, “It’s hard to tell how Sarkar was as a student. Because if he was exceptional, we would have remembered him.”
“It is hard to recall a student by the name Mainak Sarkar; he graduated almost 16 years ago,” said Prof Manish Bhattacharjee, Dean of Student Affairs, IIT-Kgp.
True, he may not have been an unimpressive student during his undergrad years, but now on, he will be remembered with disgust for UCLA murder-suicide.