A 28-year-old man died minutes after being beaten up by an unidentified youth for sitting on his motorcycle at Lichutala in Sodepur on Sunday afternoon.

Sanjay Guha, a local resident, was getting his bicycle repaired at a roadside shop. “He saw a parked motorcycle and sat down on it. This set off a burglar alarm. The owner of the two-wheeler rushed to the spot and started quarrelling with Guha,” said an officer of Khardah police station.

According to a preliminary investigation, the quarrel snowballed into a fight. Pedestrians separated the two, but by then the motorcycle-owner had landed several punches on Guha.

He walked barely 10 feet towards his home with his cycle before slumping to the ground. Local residents took him to a hospital in the neighbourhood, where he died.

“The punches of the motorcycle-owner killed Sanjay. The doctor told us that he had injuries in his lungs,” said Guha’s friend Laltu Biswas.

“We have started a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The death might have been caused by the scuffle,” said Supratim Sarkar, the North 24-Parganas police superintendent.

Investigators said the witnesses had given them the number of the motorcycle but it did not tally with the data provided by the public vehicles department.

The body of Guha, who worked in a tyre factory, was brought to Lichutala on Monday evening after a post-mortem.