Kolkata, Feb 14: A spurned lover here tried to permanently scar his former girlfriend's face with a blade on Valentine's Day Tuesday but the victim escaped with a slashed arm. Another person was also injured while trying to save the girl.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ranjit Barik attacked his 19-year-old former girlfriend when she was climbing into an auto rickshaw at the crossing of Eastern Metropolitan Bypass and Prince Anwar Shah Road in South Kolkata, police said.

"We saw the youth attacking the girl with a blade. She managed to turn her face away and the blade left big gashes on her right hand," Samir Panja, a city traffic police officer, told.

"A co-passenger tried to save her and the blade slashed his hand also. Then we rushed up and managed to overpower the youth," he added.

Panja said the girl - a resident of nearby Kalikapur - was rushed to a hospital, where she had to take 19 stitches. The other victim was given eight stitches.

Police sources said Barik, a resident of Mallickpur in South 24 Parganas, claimed that the teenager was his former girlfriend. 

"But she cheated me, she betrayed me. We used to work together. I can even show you from my mobile records the number of calls she made to me," the youth told the police after he was arrested.