Prasun Adhikary died in SSKM Hospital around 11.45pm on Monday. He had suffered brain injury and multiple fractures in the fall. He was put on ventilator because of acute respiratory distress.

Midnapore, Aug. 11: Police have said Prasun Adhikary, the Midnapore hotel employee who dropped down four floors after a scuffle with a TV reality show team, was pushed off.

“We have come to the conclusion that the hotel employee (Adhikary) was pushed off the roof. We have also concluded that he did not try to escape by sliding down a pipe. Neither was his fall accidental,” said Rajesh Singh, West Midnapore superintendent of police.

Singh said the police came to the conclusion after interrogating the arrested trio — producers Gautam Jain and Rajiv Mehra and contestant Somnath Roy Chowdhury of the Lux Fatafati Filmy Fight — and the Ritz Bengal hotel staff as well as looking into the circumstances.

He said if Adhikary had fallen while slipping down the pipe, he would have landed near the base of the building. “But we found the body about six feet from the base. This indicates Adhikary was pushed off the roof,” Singh said.

After the arrests on Saturday, the trio and other crew members had said Adhikary, in a drunken state, had harassed some of the women contestants staying in the hotel in Midnapore town. This led to a scuffle and Adhikary tried to escape by sliding down a pipe from the roof. Jain and Mehra had said they were staying in a different hotel and had come to Ritz Bengal after being informed about the scuffle.

But a police officer said: “Our probe has revealed that Gautam Jain and Rajiv Mehra’s claim that they had arrived from another hotel after hearing about the trouble is not true. We have come to know that they were on the hotel roof from 9.30pm, drinking and chatting with unit members. They were not on the roof for some time but they had not left the hotel. They surfaced when unit members were engaged in the scuffle with Adhikary and other hotel employees. We are trying to find out in which room they were in.”

Mehra was admitted to Midnapore Medical College and Hospital this afternoon after he complained of chest pain, Singh said. At night, he was brought to SSKM but doctors said his condition was not serious enough to get him admitted. He was then admitted to NRS Hospital. “He was admitted with high blood pressure,” said a hospital official.

A police team from West Midnapore came to Calcutta today and raided the house of a woman wanted in the case but could not find her.