Six Gorakhpur policemen were suspended on Tuesday after a businessman from Kanpur was found dead following a police raid at a city hotel where he was staying with two friends from Gurugram.
Gorakhpur police said the man, identified as 36-year-old Manish Gupta, slipped during the routine police checking and injured himself. However, one of Gupta’s friends, Hardeep Singh Chauhan, who was staying with him in the hotel, alleged police brutally thrashed Gupta.
Talking to reporters, Gupta’s wife Meenakshi and his father Nand Kishore, accused police of beating him.
Six policemen, including a station house officer, a chowki in-charge and four constables, were suspended in connection with the death of the Kanpur realtor, Vipin Tada, senior superintendent of police of Gorakhpur, said on Tuesday.
“During a routine checking drive, police found that these three men were the only group who were from different places, but were staying together at the hotel… So, they were checked on the basis of suspicion. In the chaos caused by police checking, one of the men slipped and suffered injuries. He was rushed to Baba Raghav Das Medical College, where he died. It was an accident…,” Tada said.
Deputy inspector general (DIG) Gorakhpur range J Ravinder Gaud told the media that a postmortem report was awaited to ascertain the exact cause of death. He said that investigations were underway to decipher the sequence of events which eventually ended up in the businessman’s death. “We have not ruled out anything till now. We are waiting for the postmortem examination report establish the cause of death and statements of all those present at the scene before we reach a logical conclusion,” said Gaud. The DIG is personally the probe.
The three had reached Gorakhpur on the invitation of a friend Chandan Saini, a resident of Mahadeva Bazar in Sikriganj area of Gorakhpur. In the evening, the four spent time talking in the room after which Chandan left with plans for sight-seeing with his friends the next morning.
According to Hardeep Singh, it was around midnight when police reached their room and asked him to provide his identity proof. “When I questioned them about the manner in which they had barged in, I was slapped even after I showed them my Aadhaar card. I gave them Chandan’s number and they spoke to him as well. They then woke up Manish who too questioned them on disturbing them so late in the night,” Hardeep said.
On being questioned, the police started thrashing Manish while Hardeep was whisked away out of the room. Minutes later he saw the police dragging Manish out of the room. Manish had blood on his face, said Hardeep, adding that some of the policemen appeared drunk. The police took Manish to the hospital where he died. Later Manish’s father and wife reached Gorakhpur and accused the police of having thrashed the businessman to death.