Bhubaneswar; Jan. 10: Family members of a 30-year-old man, whose body was recovered from the courtyard of an apartment in Chandrasekharpur about 10 days ago, today alleged that he had been murdered and the police were not cooperating in the probe.

The family members of Prashanta Pattanayak, who died on January 1, levelled the allegations after meeting the police commissioner B. K. Sharma. The youth was found lying injured in the courtyard of an apartment. He was rushed to Capital Hospital and then moved to SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack. As his condition deteriorated, his family members admitted him to a private hospital in the city, where he died. Police had registered a case of unnatural death.

Prashanta’s father Panchnan Pattanayak, alleged that the police did not receive his complaint. “They did not register any case. Nor has any inquiry been made since then,” he alleged.

According to Prashanta’s family, the youth used to live with his parents in Dumuduma and had been working as an instructor in a driving training institute for the past two years. He had become friendly with a woman client living in a nearby apartment.

The woman, his family members said, used to call him over the phone regularly and Prashanta used to visit her.

Prashanta’s father alleged that on the morning of January 1, the woman called his son to her house. “After my son’s training centre closed at noon he went to her house. In the afternoon he called us saying he would not be coming home at night as he would be accompanying the woman’s family on a picnic. Late that night, we got a call from the police that he was lying badly injured in the apartment’s courtyard,” Panchanan said. His family members alleged that when they saw Prashanta’s body they found several injuries that appeared to have been caused by torture.

“When we went to the spot, there was very little blood lying around him. How can someone bleed so little after falling from a six-storey building?” asked his brother Susant Pattnayak, showing the photograph of the spot. The family alleged that the woman and her husband had beaten their son and flung him to the ground from the roof.S

“The commissioner has assured us that he would make sure there is an investigation. He has called the police officers concerned in the evening and will ask them about the case,” said the brother of the deceased.