The Delhi Police crime branch, on Friday, conducted a tree-mapping exercise to procure circumstantial evidence from the spot where 41-year-old Gajendra Singh died at a rally here on Wednesday. A team mapped the tree from which Singh hanged himself and gathered information pertaining to marks left on its branches and trunk by his body during the episode.
As The Hindu has already reported, while asphyxia had been ascertained as the reason behind Singh’s death, an initial medical report pertaining to a cursory examination of Singh’s body soon after the incident and camera footage of the rally, recorded as per official videography procedures, revealed injury marks behind his legs and forearms, his upper and middle back and lower region of his neck.
These injuries, a senior police officer told The Hindu , seem to have been caused before the fatal wound on Singh’s neck – caused due to hanging from a white stole (gamchha) – and implies with more certainty “the likelihood of an accidental slip” than that of “deliberately jumping to end one’s life”.
According to the source, Singh had, soon after ascending the vantage point, tied his chest to the trunk.
A few minutes later, Singh pulled the stole up to his neck and then “hung himself” from the tree. Whether it was the incitement from the crowd or an attempt to seek attention having gone fatally wrong – is a subject matter of investigation.
