Not a suicide, says family of man who fell off Airoli office building

Dharmendra Lodha's family, living in Madhya Pradesh, was scheduled to arrive in the city on the day of the incident

The Rabale accident case is increasingly beginning to seem like a mystery movie straight out of Bollywood to the MIDC Rabale police investigating it. A software engineer died after falling from the sixth floor of his office building on July 4 but no concrete conclusion about the cause of his death has been reached yet. Dharmendra Lodha, 25, was working with Accenture, in their office located in building number 2 of Mindspace in Airoli for the last two-and-a-half years. The incident occurred around 3 am on July 4 when he fell off the building under mysterious circumstances. Doctors at Chhatrapati Shivaji hospital in Kalva declared him dead around 3.50 am.

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Cops suspect suicide

Investigating officer Anil Patil told mid-day that the police had spoken to around four to five of Lodha's colleagues who told them that he had invested lakhs of rupees somewhere and had suffered losses in those deals. "He was under depression for around three months owing to this. These statements point to him committing suicide," Patil said. "However, we have sent his mobile phone to the Kalina FSL for a detailed analysis and are also waiting for his post-mortem analysis report. We have written to the bank for his account details to get a clearer picture," Patil added. "We also scanned the CCTV footage which does not show any suspicious activity," he added.

Dharmendra Lodha

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Family denies suicide

Dharmendra's elder brother, Daulat Singh Lodha, said, "I know my brother had invested around Rs 2.5 lakh in Q-Net but he was not in depression at all. I always asked him to invest his hard-earned money somewhere and a few weeks ago he had transferred Rs 1.5 lakh into my account asking me to invest them for him. We were like best friends and he used to tell me everything about his life. He never sounded like he was upset or under depression." The family is unwilling to accept the premise of his probable suicide. "If he had money to invest, why would he commit suicide for just Rs 2.5 lakh?" his brother wondered, adding that their parents (from Madhya Pradesh) were on their way to Mumbai when the incident took place.

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