ND Tiwari's Son Rohit Shekhar 'Smothered With Pillow', Police File Murder Case Days After Death

New Delhi: Two days after the death of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari, son of the late Uttarakhand Chief Minister ND Tiwari, the Delhi Police have registered a case of murder. An investigation was started after a postmortem report revealed “unnatural death”, sources told CNN-News 18.

Following the postmortem at AIIMS here, the police on Thursday registered a case of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code against unknown persons and transferred it to the Crime Branch for investigation.

The investigation so far has revealed that Tiwari was smothered with a pillow.

The autopsy was conducted by a medical board comprising five senior doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). "The medical board unanimously concluded that the cause of death in this case is asphyxia as a result of strangulation and smothering. It is a sudden unnatural death, placed in the category of homicide," the head of the AIIMS' forensic department, Dr Sudhir Gupta, said.

The police are questioning Tiwari’s family members, including his mother Ujjwala and his uncle's son. His wife, Apoorva, is currently not in Delhi and will be summoned for interrogation upon her return. The inhabitants of the Defence Colony house are his mother, wife, uncle's son and other servants.

Tiwari was brought dead to the Max Hospital in Saket in south Delhi on the evening of April 16. Initial reports suggested that he had died after a heart attack.

According to police investigation, Tiwari had gone to bed after dinner around 11.30 pm on Tuesday night. He had also consumed half a bottle of liquor.

"He was murdered around 1:30 am on Wednesday and the probe revealed he was defenceless at the time of the crime. The entry of the accused in his room was friendly and we cannot rule out the role of any family member," a source told CNN-News 18.

Although Tiwari was murdered in the early hours of Wednesday, he was brought to the hospital next evening. At the time of his death, police officials said that bleeding was noticed from his nose.

The probe also revealed there are seven CCTV cameras installed in Tiwari's house, of which the two inside and outside his bedroom were defunct.

Tiwari had joined the BJP ahead of the 2017 Uttarakhand assembly polls and had recently expressed interest in joining the Congress.