A retired official of the mint in Taratala died sitting in an autorickshaw which he boarded in New Alipore on his way to Chanditala in southwest Kolkata’s Behala on Monday morning.
Lal Mani Singh’s co-passengers did not realise that the man they were sitting next to could be dead. When all of them got off the auto at Chanditala, the 63-year-old was still seated.
“Singh boarded an autorickshaw in New Alipore. At Chanditala, when his fellow passengers got off, he was still in the auto. Initially, the auto driver thought that Singh, who was on the back seat, had fallen asleep. But when he tried to wake him up, Singh fell sideways on the seat,” said an officer of Behala police station.
The auto driver raised an alarm and people in the neighbourhood gathered. The police were alerted.
Singh was taken to Vidyasagar State General Hospital, where he was declared dead, the police said.
Singh was from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. “He had shifted back to Bareilly after retiring from his service in the mint three years ago. He came to Kolkata for some work,” an officer said.
Hundreds of people travel daily on this auto route in the southern part of Kolkata, which connects New Alipore to Behala. When cops spoke to the auto driver, he purportedly told them that neither he nor the passengers who were travelling with Singh had the slightest clue that he was unwell or was collapsing.
“We found an identity card in his shirt pocket that had his address, contact number and job details. He was a retired official of the mint. It is apparent from the document found on him that he had retired as an ‘operator’,” said the officer.
His family in Bareilly has been informed.
The body was sent for post-mortem. An unnatural death case has been started at Behala police station.
A senior police officer in the south-west division of Kolkata police said there were no apparent marks of injury on Singh.
“The exact cause of death will be clear after the post-mortem report comes,” the officer said.
