Cop son killed in Gangtok brawl

Gangtok, May 19: A Bihar police officer’s son, studying engineering in Sikkim, died last night after he was allegedly beaten up outside a Gangtok pub, a follow-up to a brawl inside it. Police have arrested five Gangtok youths, one of whom, Gurmey Wangchuk, is the son of a senior Sikkim state official. A senior police officer said: “There was a scuffle between the two groups, one comprising local youths in Gangtok and the other of the engineering students of Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology (SMIT) at the local pub (Live and Loud). “The six engineering students had gone to celebrate the birthday party of one of their friends. While dancing on the floor they had a fight over a woman who was in the pub. Later, the engineering students were beaten up by the youths outside the pub.” The alleged second round of assault happened around 1.30am outside Live and Loud. The Manipal students had taken an out pass from the college and reached Gangtok, about 7km from Manipal, yesterday evening. The boy who died has been identified as Rakshit Singh Meena, a 22-year-old third year civil engineering student Manipal. His father, B.S. Meena, is the deputy inspector-general of Purnea, Bihar. The Sikkim police officer said: “The friends of Rakshit took him to a hotel room in Gangtok (they had booked for the night). Rakshit, who was grievously injured, complained of chest and back pain. He was rushed to the STNM Hospital.” But the hospital told Rakshit’s friends to take him to the Central Referral Hospital because there were no empty beds. When he was taken to the second hospital, Rakshit was declared dead on arrival, the police said. The hospital sources informed that the cause of death was internal chest and the back injury. The body was handed over to the family this evening after a post-mortem. “He was the only son and had come to Sikkim three years ago to study engineering. He has two school-going sisters aged 15 and eight years,” said a relative who had accompanied the family to take the body from the referral hospital. The Meenas hail from Rajasthan and “the family has decided to take the body to Japiur on a flight tomorrow”, the relative said. Superintendent of police (East) Manoj Tewari, said: “Based on the video taken by the engineering students on the dance floor, the five persons were arrested and they confessed to their crime during interrogation.” The police identified the arrested youths as Loden Sherpa, 32; Bidhan Pradhan, 32; Gurmey Wangchuk, 35; Sonam Namgyal, 31, and Ugyen Namgyal, 21. All are from Gangtok. The police are looking for a sixth accused. “The sixth person in the incident is yet to be identified and the police are trying to find the person,” Tewari said. Deputy inspector-general Mandeep Tuli said all five have been booked on the charges of causing death ad voluntarily causing grievous hurt. Bihar director-general of police Abhayanand said: “I got an SMS from him (B.S. Meena) on my mobile phone in the morning (Sunday) seeking leave as his son was admitted to a hospital.” Sources close to the family said the Meenas left Purnea around 11am today for Sikkim by plane. The boy’s mother fainted in Gangtok after she realised that her son had died.