After around a month since his death was declared a suicide, the sister of 37-year-old engineer, Bob Marley N Sangma, has filed a petition in a Tura court seeking that the authorities reopen the case as she believes it to be a homicide.
Tangme Marchina N Sangma told Highland Post that the circumstances of the death of her brother, an SDO with the Meghalaya Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (MePDCL) in Tura North Division, was suspicious and every aspect pointed to him being a victim of murder.
Tangme is a full-time PhD student and had hurried back from Pune upon learning of her brother’s demise.
According to the police, based on the statement of Bob’s widow, Dokchi R Marak, he was found hanging from the ceiling fan at around 8:30pm on June 8 in a room-cum-office where he usually retreated to on the ground floor of his house.
“I am not satisfied with the answers I received from the police or from his wife. They could not provide me with straight answers. They could not give me any photographs to show him hanging. Neither could they tell me in clear terms the names of the persons who took down his allegedly hanging body that night,” Tangme said.
She added that it is mandatory for the police to take photographs of the site when it is a case of unnatural death and also take the statements of all the persons who claim to have found the body hanging as well as the statements of the persons who brought down the body, if it really was a case of hanging. When she had demanded a post-mortem report, the Superintendent of Police reportedly told her it would take two months.
She also said that she visited the SP’s office demanding to know more about her brother’s death. According to Tangme, he provided her with some photographs of her brother lying on a bed on a bare mattress. In her petition, she said that the photographs that she had received from the SP show “grievous injury marks on the right side of the face, which was swollen. On the side of his neck there were two deep cut marks seen to be made by a sharp-pointed object, two blotch marks and the ligature marks of strangulation very much there.”
When the post-mortem report was finally received, however, nothing was mentioned about the bruises and deep cuts.
At the same time, Tangme said that there had been years of discord between the married couple. She added that her sister-in-law said that she had found the body herself.
“She told me that she had seen, through the window, the body hanging and asked the boys (working in the house) to break the window and get inside. But apart from her, no one else saw the body hanging. But she could not tell me who took down the body and laid it on the bed because she said she had fainted. So, there is a mystery here as to who took down the body, which is vital for me to know,” Tangme stated.
Police reportedly did not take down a statement from the two boys concerned.
It also flummoxed her that her parents, who live in Baghmara, were not informed immediately about the tragedy that had befallen their son. Instead, they came to know from other sources. Bob’s maternal uncle, who lived in the same street as the victim and his wife, was not informed either, having to learn the dreadful news from neighbours.
“I don’t want anything. I just want to know the truth about what happened to my brother,” the sister said.
