A Jesuit college in Ranchi is in deep shock after an engineering student beheaded his girlfriend yesterday. “I have never seen such a gruesome incident in my life. It appears to be vengeance killing over spurned love,” said Jesuit Father Nicholas Tete, principal of St. Xavier's College, in the capital of Jharkhand state. The girl was a student of Ram Manohar Lohia College, but had come to the college for an exam, the priest said today. She was attacked as she left the second-floor exam hall after the three-hour test. “I rushed out of my office and saw the assassin running. He tried to escape but the college students nabbed him,” Father Tete said. City Superintendent of Police Sambhu Thakur told reporters that the girl, Khushbu Kumari, was killed by Bijendra Kumar, and engineering diploma student from Jamshedpur, another town in the state. The attack with a kukri, the traditional weapon used by the Gurkhas, was so brutal that the girl's head fell a foot away from the body, police said. Father Tete said the incident has shocked people in Jharkhand and the college administration has sought police protection. Although the council had made the college an examination center, it did not provide any security. “In the beginning a guard was given but he was also taken back,” he said. The assailant later told the police that he had been in love with Kumari for the past five years and that the two had decided to marry. He decided to kill her and himself when he heard that her parents were planning her marriage after the exam. Kumari’s father Lal Maheshwar Nath Shahdev told reporters that he usually took the girl to and from the exam center. “Yesterday I had some work,” he said.