Doctor claims Sadiq Batcha died of asphyxia

Chennai: The death of former telecom minister A Raja's key aide Sadiq Batcha was due to asphyxia and his body showed compression of the neck with hanging mark, a doctor who conducted the postmortem said on Thursday.

"We cannot say now whether it was suicide or murder. The report will be ready in two weeks," Dr V Dekal of the Government Royapettah Hospital, where the autopsy was conducted, said.

"The death was caused due to asphyxia but the cause of that cannot be confirmed till the forensic report is received," he said in Chennai , adding that the entire autopsy was videographed.

"Until and unless the results come you cannot concretely tell whether it is a suicide or not. As of now, death is due to asphyxia; that is deficiency of oxygen in the tissue. So, compression of the neck could be the reason for this asphyxia, but exactly whether it was suicide, the hanging mark, anti-mortem or postmortem, before death or after death, has to be confirmed by microscopic examination. Once the results come we will be able to concretely tell whether it is a case of hanging," he said.

The doctor said, "Mark of hanging was only there, no other external injury was there."

A team of doctors performed the autopsy at the hospital in Chennai for nearly three hours.

Some angry relatives of Batcha, who was found hanging at his house on Friday, shouted slogans against the media and police pacified them.

The body was later handed over to Batcha's relatives and the burial is expected to be done in Perambalur, his native place.

Batcha, who was the Managing Director of Greenhouse Promoters, a firm under the scanner of the CBI as well as the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the 2G spectrum scam, was found hanging from the roof of the bedroom of his house in Teynampet in South Chennai by his wife Rekha Banu and his driver.

His wife claimed that he did it "unable to cope with the pressure" of the probe.

Batcha, whose official and residential premises were raided by CBI and questioned at least four times in the last two months, had left a suicide note in which he had stated that he was "embarrassed" by the raids and the extensive media coverage of them.

Tamil Nadu government has transferred the case of suicide to CBI.