Ajay Ishwardas Chordia

Mumbai, Oct. 27: A Pune hotelier was today found hanging from a ceiling fan in his hotel, with police saying their initial investigations suggested suicide.

Officers, however, did not say whether Ajay Ishwardas Chordia, 47, had left a suicide note. The dead man was the brother of Atul and Sagar Chordia, owners of Panchshil Realty and listed among the richest Indians by a magazine last year.

Ajay’s body was found in one of the 115 rooms at the Double Tree in Chinchwad, an industrial and manufacturing hub and a suburb of Pune. The hotel is a franchisee of the global chain Hilton Worldwide.

Ajay was chairman and managing director of Panchshil Hotels Pvt Ltd, a part of the Panchshil group.

The Chordia brothers had come under the spotlight for their meteoric rise in Pune and their proximity to Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and his family. Their father, Ishwardas Chordia, had been Pawar’s fellow student at the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce.

The Chordias, a family of sugar traders, entered the real estate business in the 1990s and went on to become the leading builders in Pune.

Atul and Sagar founded Panchshil Realty in 2002. The firm has built several Pune landmarks, including a JW Marriott Hotel, a World Trade Centre, a luxury residential condo design by ace architect Philippe Starck, and a Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

They also constructed Pune’s first Trump Tower, which carries Donald Trump’s brand name, last year. The group has built IT parks too.

While Atul and Sagar ran the family businesses in Pune city, Ajay managed the Chordias’ ventures in the neighbouring suburb of Pimpri-Chinchwad. Double Tree had forged the alliance with Hilton in June last year.