By SARA SAMI and BEGENA GEORGE
POLICE are treating the death of an Indian man found hanging in a village ma’atam as suicide, it was revealed yesterday.
But workmates insisted that 28-year-old painter C Palanichami was found with his hands and feet bound.
He had a family back home he doted on and would never kill himself, said colleagues at Aman Carpentry, in Sanad.
But police had ruled out foul play, since there was no evidence of anyone else being involved and no injury marks on Mr Palanichami’s body, said Public Prosecutor Mamdooh Al Moawda.
He said the CID had assured the Public Prosecution that the death was suicide.
By SARA SAMI and BEGENA GEORGE
POLICE are treating the death of an Indian man found hanging in a village ma’atam as suicide, it was revealed yesterday.
But workmates insisted that 28-year-old painter C Palanichami was found with his hands and feet bound.
He had a family back home he doted on and would never kill himself, said colleagues at Aman Carpentry, in Sanad.
But police had ruled out foul play, since there was no evidence of anyone else being involved and no injury marks on Mr Palanichami’s body, said Public Prosecutor Mamdooh Al Moawda.
He said the CID had assured the Public Prosecution that the death was suicide.
Witnesses and Mr Palanichami’s sponsor were questioned yesterday by the Public Prosecution, said Mr Al Moawda.
Mr Palanichami, was found hanging from a door frame on the second floor of a ma’atam in Al Qariya, near Budaiya, at around 2.30pm on Monday.
He was found when his foreman went to check on him after the sponsor was alerted by villagers who saw the body.
The Indian Embassy was last night still waiting for the post-mortem report, said Ambassador Balkrishna Shetty. He said he could not comment on the case until he had seen the report.
Co-workers and friends, who asked not to be named, said they could not believe that Mr Palanichami could have committed suicide.
One workmate said he saw the body hanging, with the hands and feet bound.
“Our sponsor got a call at around 2pm from someone at the ma’atam saying that Mr Palanichami had been found hanging from a door frame and he informed the rest of us at the workshop,” said the worker.
“Immediately some of us rushed to the spot and reached there by 3pm. I saw the body, though only for less than a minute, because by then a police official pushed us out.
“But I saw that his hands were bound to his body and his feet too were tied.
“There was a plastic wire wound around his neck and there were bruise marks on the visible parts of the body.”
Another workmate, who lived with Mr Palanichami at the company’s camp in Sanad, said he could not believe it was suicide.
“I knew him well enough, for the four months that we were living and working together, to know that he would never take his own life,” said a co-worker.
“He had a father, mother, a brother and married sister back home, who were the centre of his world.”
Mr Palanichami was from the Maavatam district of Tamil Nadu and came to Bahrain four months ago.
His body is at the Salmaniya Medical Complex mortuary.
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