Body found hanging from ceiling fan in room of his Chinchwad hotel

Pune’s leading hotelier Ajay Ishwardas Chordia was found dead in one of the rooms of Double Tree hotel, a franchisee of global hotel chain Hilton Worldwide, owned by him at Chinchwad on Monday afternoon.

The body of 47-year-old Ajay Chordia, brother of Panchshil Realty Group owner Atul Chordia, was found hanging from the ceiling fan in one of the rooms of the 115-room Double Tree hotel at Chinchwad, a satellite town of Pune.

Preliminary investigations by the Chinchwad police have revealed that Ajay Chordia had committed suicide.

There was, however, no confirmation from the police as to whether the businessman had left any suicide note. Nor were any details available as to why Ajay Chordia had taken the extreme step of ending his life.

Apart from being chairman and managing director of the Panchshil Hotels Pvt ltd, Ajay Chordia was also part of the Panchshil Realty Group run by Atul and Sagar Chordia, who were listed as 100th richest among Indian billionaires by the Forbes magazine in 2013.

The Chordia brothers had shot into limelight owing to their meteoric rise in Pune and their proximity to NCP chief Sharad Pawar and his family. Their father Ishwardas Chordia was Pawar’s collage mate. Pawar and Ishwardas studied at the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC) of Pune.

Coming originally from a family of sugar traders, Chordias entered real estate business in early 1990s. Before long, they became Pune’s leading builders.

Having founded  Panchshil Realty in 2002, Atul and Sagar Choordia have designed Pune’s several landmarks including a JW Marriott Hotel, a World Trade Centre, a luxury residential condo design by Phillippe Starck, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and built the first Trump Tower with Donald Trump’s brand name in Pune in 2013 among other business and IT parks.

Between them, the Chordia brothers had divided the family businesses in Pune and neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad,  While Atul and Sagar Chordia managed the family businesses in Pune, Ajay was looking after the family business interests in Pune’s satellite twin towns of Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Through his Double Tree hotel, Ajay had forged a business tie-up with Hilton Group in June 2013.