MP man beaten to death by cops for lighting beedi in train, says son; cops deny

Agra: A 50-year-old man from Madhya Pradesh 's Tikamgarh died after he was allegedly thrashed by govt railway police (GRP) constables for smoking ‘beedi' on the Delhi-bound Gondwana Express . The man's son, 20, who was with his dad, claimed that he was "murdered" while police refuted it, saying he collapsed on his own.

SP GRP Agra, Abhishek Verma, said, "Postmortem report suggests there were no external injury marks on the body, and the cause of death was heart attack." SHO GRP, Yadram Singh, added that a team from the local thana had gone to Mathura junction, and doctors tried to revive him.

The incident took place between Agra and Mathura in the early hours of Tuesday when the man, Ramdayal Ahirwar , was travelling with his son Vishal Ahirwar to Delhi, where the duo worked as construction workers. Vishal claimed his father died due to thrashing by cops. "After attending a family wedding in MP, we boarded Gondwana Express from Lalitpur and were on our way to Delhi's Palam. Once the train left Agra Cantt station, two GRP constables thrashed my father, claiming that he was smoking ‘beedi' inside the coach. They also took him from the general coach to the sleeper section, and thrashed him again," he alleged.

A video later emerged on Friday in which a man, believed to be Ramdayal, could be purportedly seen lying unconscious on a general coach floor surrounded by some passengers.