“The victim fell into Chirag Dilli drain by accident”
More than two weeks after the body of a man from Manipur
was recovered under mysterious circumstances from a drain in Chirag
Dilli, the Delhi Police are now claiming that his death was an accident
and have ruled out any foul play as alleged by his friends.
Kawilungbou
Chawang was in his mid-20s and was working for a BPO in Gurgaon. On
July 5, he had gone to a friend’s house in Chirag Dilli and while coming
back he fell into a nearby drain.
The locals at
that time had claimed that the victim ran on the street before jumping
across a wall and had fallen into the drain. His friends did not agree
with the theory and alleged that it was an incident of hate crime and
that Mr. Chawang was pushed into the drain.
They
said that it was “unlikely that a man in an inebriated state, as claimed
by the locals, could have scaled such a high wall, crossed a fast
flowing drain and then drowned in another”. They suspected that “he was
running for his life”.
While the Delhi Police had
earlier claimed that Mr. Chawang was drunk at the time of the incident,
they confirmed on Monday that he accidentally fell into the drain while
trying to jump the wall in an inebriated state.
“The
post-mortem report shows no foul play. Also, we have scanned CCTV
footage available from nearby places which shows that the man
accidentally fell into the drain,” said a police officer.
There
are two drains running parallel to each other in Chirag Dilli village. A
10-12 foot high wall with iron grills on the top separates these drains
from the Chirag Dilli village road. The drain by the wall is shallow,
but was flowing fast due to the rain that time.