A middle-aged US national was found dead in a hotel on Sudder Street in central Calcutta on Thursday morning.

A preliminary post-mortem has concluded that Virginia resident Mitchell Samuel Chiles, 55, died of a drug overdose. Police have recovered drugs and alcohol from his room. The cops ruled out foul play.

Chiles had checked into the hotel early on Wednesday. “He had come from China, his country of birth, via Nepal,” said an officer of New Market police station. “His flight had landed in the early hours of Wednesday and he checked into the hotel around 3.15am.”

It is, however, still not clear whether he was just a tourist.

On Thursday morning, a phone call came to the hotel from a Chinese woman in Delhi, who wanted to talk to Chiles. She claimed to be his friend and said she was not being able to reach him on his cellphone.

“Around 10am on Thursday, after Chiles didn’t respond to the knocks on the door, the hotel staff opened the room with their set of keys and found him lying dead on the floor,” the officer said.

“Seventeen packets of heroin, three syringes, two of them apparently used, two half-full bottles of whisky, two strips of anti-depressants and some Viagra tablets were found in the room. Around Rs12,000 and some foreign currency notes were also recovered,” said an officer.

“A lot of alcohol was found in the person’s stomach and fresh injection marks were found in his body. According to the preliminary post-mortem, he died of an overdose of drugs,” said Damayanti Sen, the joint commissioner of police (crime).

The police are trying to get in touch with Chiles’s family in the US.