The bodies of three men in their 30s were found under mysterious circumstances inside a car parked in R.K. Puram on Monday night. While the police said that prima facie it appeared to be a case of death by suffocation, the victims’ family claimed that there were “signs of poisoning”.
The victims – Balwinder Singh (33), Laxman Singh and Nishant Dutta (both 32) – were friends and business partners who lived in different parts of South Delhi. The Honda City car in which the bodies were found belonged to Balwinder.
As there were no external injuries on the bodies of any of the victims, the police are now waiting for the post-mortem report to establish if they were poisoned. If there was any poisoning, they would have to wait for the viscera report, which is expected to come later.
The business partners had come together to set up an event management venture four months ago. Since they conducted their business over the phone, they would meet up in one of their cars daily to discuss work.
On Monday evening, too, the trio had met. Balwinder had driven his car from his Kishangarh residence to Lakshman’s house in Sector 4 of R.K. Puram. Lakshman’s brother Daulat last saw the trio alive around 7 P.M., in the car parked by the roadside.
“Around 10 p.m. I went to meet them and found the three lying unconscious. All of them had vomited over themselves,” said Daulat, who runs a grocery story, a few metres away from the point where the car was parked. He added that the air conditioning of the car was on.
Balwinder was in the driver’s seat; Lakshman in the co-passenger’s while Nishant was sitting in the rear, police said.
The three men were rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Trauma Centre in the same car but they were declared brought dead.
Police have registered a case under Section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The provision is invoked in cases pertaining to suspicious deaths either by suicide or accident.
Contesting police’s claim that the trio died due to carbon monoxide poisoning , Daulat said that there could be some conspiracy behind the deaths. “The car was parked in a fairly open area and the rear window was rolled down at least five inches,” he said.
Daulat added that he was told by a neighbour that there was another person in the car who could have “poisoned” the snacks and soft drinks the three had consumed. Disputing the police version, Daulat said that only Balwinder was seated on the front seat and his friends were seated behind.
“Whenever I have seen them, I have found two of them occupying the front seats while one of them sat behind. For the first time I saw the seat beside the driver empty. There was one more person who must have left after poisoning them,” he alleged. The police, however, said that so far no one has come forward and claimed that there was a fourth person in the vehicle. No CCTV footage of the spot was available, they said.
