Seven were alive before falling in well: Doctors

HYDERABAD: Preliminary tests suggest that at least seven of the nine people — whose bodies were fished out from a borewell in Warangal last week — were alive when they fell into it, said forensic doctors at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Hospital in Warangal. Two others, they suspect, were already dead by then.
The nine bodies, all of them of workers employed at a local gunny bag manufacturing unit, had been retrieved from a borewell in Gorrekunta, over a period of 48 hours. While four of them belonged to one family originally from West Bengal — Maqsood, his wife Nisha, daughter Bushra and her three-year-old son — the others, identified as Shabaz Alam, Sohail Alam, Shakeel, Sham, Sriram, belonged to Bihar and Tripura.
With leads from forensic analysis being inconclusive, investigators are now analysing the call data records (CDR) of the deceased. Among other probabilities, cops are also trying to ascertain if someone had pushed the victims into the well. Speaking to STOI local police sources said two people, both natives of Bihar, had been taken into custody for questioning. Police are still trying to conclude the cause of the suspicious deaths.
“In the primary investigation, we found that they died of drowning. There were scratch marks on some of the bodies. How they occurred, is still being investigated. Among the nine bodies, we suspect that seven were alive when they fell into the well while two others were either sleeping or already dead when they were thrown into the well,” said Dr Raza Malik who performed the post-mortem examination. The scratch marks are suspected to have been caused due to dragging of the bodies or injuries suffered while falling into the well.
Dr Malik said that they were yet to conclude the cause of death and were waiting for Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) to perform some tests before reaching any conclusions. Since most of the bodies were in a decomposed state, forensic experts found it difficult to draw conclusions. The doctors, through FSL, want to find out if there was any poison in the liver or viscera to ascertain if there was any foul play.
Meanwhile, based on CDR data, police found that Maqsood had called Shakeel to the gunny manufacturing unit on Thursday night. This was confirmed by Shakeel’s wife.