Lucknow: The mysterious death of a 24-year-old civil services aspirant in Barabanki took a serious turn after the district administration exhumed his body for a postmortem on Monday.Acting on a request from the family of the deceased, district magistrate Shashank Tripathi had ordered that the body of Priyanshu Verma be taken out of the grave and sent for an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death.Priyanshu, a resident of Mohammadpur Khala in Barabanki, was preparing for the UPSC examination while living in Prayagraj. His father, Mahendra Verma, is a home guard, and Priyanshu was his only son.According to family members, Priyanshu was returning home on the evening of Mar 3 to celebrate Holi when he was found unconscious under suspicious circumstances near Dashrathpur village in the Fatehpur police station area. Locals reportedly noticed injury marks on his head and other parts of his body.The family rushed him to a private hospital in Lucknow where he died during treatment.The family buried the body on Mar 4 without getting a postmortem done. However, relatives later raised doubts about the circumstances surrounding his death, alleging that it did not appear to be a normal accident and suspecting possible foul play.SHO, Fatehpur, Amit Singh told TOI that there is a tradition in the village in which if any sudden death of any unmarried individual takes place, then his or her body is usually buried. “Postmortem report is awaited but there were multiple injures on the body,” he said.
