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Jan Suraaj digital manager Devpalik Gupta found dead near Muri a day after vanishing from Jan Shatabdi Express
Devpalik Gupta, digital communication manager of Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party, vanished from the Ranchi-Patna Jan Shatabdi Express on Monday and was found dead on Tuesday near Muri Junction in Jharkhand. The cause is unknown; the postmortem is awaited. Colleagues allege police delay.
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Devpalik Gupta, the digital communication manager of Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party, was found dead on Tuesday, 27 October, in a forested area near Muri Junction in Jharkhand, about a day after he vanished from a moving train. The cause of death is not known, and it has not been established whether it was an accident or a crime. The investigation will depend on the postmortem report, which had not been reported at the time of writing. Police have said that a fall from the train is one possibility.
The disappearance
Gupta, who was 21 according to one report, though another gives his age as 31, was from Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh and a former student of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Delhi. On Monday, he was travelling from Ranchi to Patna on the Jan Shatabdi Express, train number 12366, with two associates.
At about 3 pm, shortly before the train reached Muri station, he left his seat to order food from the pantry car and did not return. His companions found that his phone was switched off. A search of the train and of Muri station, with a ticket examiner and staff of the Railway Protection Force, found nothing.
The delay and the allegations
Passengers filed a complaint through the Rail Madad app when the train reached Bokaro. One report alleges that a dispute over jurisdiction between the Railway Protection Force and the Government Railway Police delayed the registration of a First Information Report by more than six hours. It was registered in Ranchi at 9 pm on Monday.
Colleagues of Gupta have accused the police of being lax in the first hours and of failing to carry out an intensive search through the night. The reports do not carry a response from the railway police or the railway administration to these charges.
His body was found on Tuesday afternoon, according to the party's national spokesperson, Kumar Saurabh Singh. Most reports place the discovery in a forested area near Muri Junction, while one report places it at Jarwadih under the Angara police station limits in Ranchi, so the exact location is not consistent in the accounts. A joint team of the police and the Government Railway Police has taken custody of the body and is completing the legal formalities.
The death is described as having taken place in suspicious circumstances, and police say that the possibility of an accidental fall is one of the lines being examined. Nothing has been established, and the cause should not be assumed until the postmortem and the investigation are complete.
Singh posted on social media, tagging Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and the Ranchi district administration, and asked for immediate action. The reports available do not carry a statement from Prashant Kishor. The party has said that Gupta was a young member of its team who worked on its digital communication.
The first is how a passenger came to be out of the train. Trains on this route pass through hilly and forested stretches near Muri, and railway police will look at where the train was at 3 pm, whether any doors were open and where the body was found in relation to the track. The second is the timeline of the search, since the family and the party say that more could have been done in the first hours. The third is the postmortem, which can show whether the injuries are consistent with a fall from a moving train or with something else.
Cases of passengers who fall from trains are not uncommon, and the railways record them every year, but a disappearance that ends in a death draws more attention when the person belongs to a political party. The investigators will need to examine his phone records, the footage of cameras at stations on the route, if there is any, and the statements of his two companions and of other passengers.
The postmortem report is the next step, and the police are expected to say more once it is available. The party and the family will want a clear account, and they have asked for action. Until the facts are established, the matter is an unexplained death, and any claim about its cause is speculation.
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