A 28-year-old man from Manipur was found dead under rather mysterious circumstances on Sunday morning. Identified as Kawilungbou Chawang, he was working for a BPO in Gurgaon and lived in Delhi’s Naraina area.
According to police report, he was partying at a friend’s house in Chirag Dilli on Saturday night. locals claim that the victim ran on the streets before jumping across a wall into the drain, his friends have alleged foul play. The latter have pointed to the ‘highly unlikely’ possibility that a man, in an inebriated condition, could have scaled such a high wall, cross a fast-flowing drain and then get drowned in another. They suspect he was running for his life.
“His friends said that he drank with them before leaving for home without informing. They searched outside the house but couldn’t find him. They then learnt of his death. We are questioning them and the eyewitnesses,” said a senior police officer.
Azad, a local, claimed he saw Chawang running on the streets before scaling a fenced wall that separated the drainage from the locality. There are two drains parallel to each other outside Chirag Dilli village. The one by the wall is shallow but has been flowing fast due to the recent rain. Parallel to it, and only a few feet away, is a deep but stagnant canal with several iron rods emerging from it. “The man jumped the wall at about 2 am and landed in the flowing drain. He was swept away for some distance but managed to emerge on the other side. He then dug his hands into the ground and stepped into the parallel drain thinking it to be an empty land with a grass cover,” said Azad. The drain in which Chawang drowned contains a thick film of green algae. Another eyewitness Rohit said he was working at a nearby temple when he heard cries for help. “He was drowning when I reached the spot. My father tried to save him but failed. We then informed police and Fire Department who fished him out,” he said. The victim’s friends and family, meanwhile, have pointed to an “improbable sequence of events” leading to Chawang’s death.