Devpalik Gupta, a digital communication manager for Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party, who went missing from a train travelling from Ranchi to Patna on Monday, was found dead under suspicious circumstances on Tuesday, IANS reported. Jan Suraaj national spokesperson Kumar Saurabh Singh confirmed that Gupta's body had been discovered and said police were investigating whether it was an accident or a criminal act.

Source: IANS via hi INDiA

According to his family and colleagues, Gupta was travelling to Patna on Monday aboard the Ranchi-Patna Jan Shatabdi Express (Train No. 12366), occupying seat 50 in coach C-2 with two associates. At around 3 p.m., shortly before the train reached Muri station, he went towards the pantry car to place a food order but never returned to his seat. His companions searched the train and Muri station with the help of the Train Ticket Examiner and Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel, but found no trace of him, and his mobile phone was switched off.

Gupta's body was recovered from bushes near the railway tracks in the Angara police station area, close to Barwadag village on the Ranchi-Muri line, police said. Rural Superintendent of Police Gaurav Goswami told India Today TV that preliminary findings indicated Gupta had sustained a head injury and that it appeared he might have fallen from the moving train. The body will be sent for a post-mortem examination, and the cause of death will be established after it, police said.

Source: India Today TV via News89

Gupta's colleagues have alleged that a jurisdictional dispute between the RPF and the Government Railway Police (GRP) delayed the registration of the FIR by over six hours — it was ultimately filed in Ranchi at 9 p.m. on Monday — and alleged that police were lax during the initial hours and did not conduct an intensive search through the night. These are allegations by the colleagues, reported by IANS, and have not been established as findings. The party had earlier appealed to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and the Ranchi district administration to intervene after Gupta went missing.

Gupta, 31, was a native of Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, and had been associated with Jan Suraaj's digital media work for the past four years. He was travelling to Patna ahead of the announcement of the Bihar Legislative Council election results. A joint team of police and GRP has taken custody of the body and is completing legal formalities; further investigation will be conducted on the basis of the post-mortem report, IANS said.