His father was sprawled on the floor. Gaurav Sethi, 22, thought he was asleep. He sat down beside him, waiting for him to wake up.
His father was sprawled on the floor. Gaurav Sethi, 22, thought he was asleep. He sat down beside him, waiting for him to wake up. Hours went by, but he didn’t stir. Feeling sleepy himself, Gaurav lied down on the floor beside him. Waking up, he found his father, Rajender, 50, still sleeping. He kept on sitting beside him...
It went on and on for days — six, as per police estimation — till the cops came to the Sethis’ ground floor flat at Trimurti Society, Sector 8, Nerul on Wednesday morning. They found the mentally challenged Gaurav sitting beside his dead father.
Reconstructing the events on the basis of what they found in the flat, police came up with a plausible explanation to this bizarre but touching incident. According to them, about six days ago, Rajender, a diabetic, was putting on his trousers when he lost balance and fell. His head hit the floor hard, and he died on the spot.
“Because of his unsound mind, Gaurav thought his father was sleeping. The body was on the floor, near the main door of the flat. The boy slept beside it night after night. He failed to realise that his father was dead, and didn’t alert the neighbours. When we came to the flat, he told us his father was sleeping. He had not eaten for six days,” said BR Hangirge of Nerul police. “Rajender’s wife was away visiting her mother in New Delhi when the tragedy happened.”
Whether Gaurav’s mother tried to get in touch with her husband and son in those six days, police could not say for sure. They found the landline in the flat not working, and Rajender had no mobile phone. They are waiting for her to arrive from New Delhi on Thursday.
“We had been getting a foul smell for the past three days. Initially, we thought it to be a dead dog rotting in the garden behind our building,” said Sunita Saini, a first floor resident. “On Wednesday, the stench became unbearable. It seemed to be coming from the Sethis’ flat. The other residents said they hadn’t not seen the Sethis. We became worried as Rajender Sethi had suffered a heart attack a few months ago.”
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