Ayurveda doc found dead at home, cash and jewellery stolen

NEWDELHI: A 57-year-old ayurveda doctor was found dead at his home i n northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri on Monday morning.

Though a dagger was found near his body, there were no visible injury marks. Police suspect the doctor was either smothered or he died of a cardiac attack.

Police said an almirah in the bedroom in which the doctor was found was ransacked.

Around ₹5 lakh in cash and jewellery worth around ₹6 lakh, which the doctor had kept for his adopted daughter’s wedding next month, were missing.

Police suspect that the doctor, Mukim Ahmad Iqbal, was killed for resisting robbery.

They suspect that the killers could be known to him because there were no signs of a forced entry. Except for the almirah in which the cash and jewellery were kept, everything in the house was intact.

Deputy commissioner of police (northwest) Aslam Khan said Iqbal’s relatives told them that he had a Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) degree and was running his clinic from the ground floor of the house. However, the police did not find his certificates.

Iqbal was living with his 25-year-old daughter Sofia, a guest teacher in a nearby school, after his wife died around four years ago.

The couple did not have a child and so they had adopted the daughter of Iqbal’s brother-inlaw when she was less than a year old.

DCP Khan said the crime took place between 7.30am and 8.30am, when Sofia left home for school and before the domestic help of the house came for work. The domestic help told police that she went back when she found the door shut and nobody responded to her repeated knocks.

“Sofia told us that she used to leave the door open every day for the domestic help while leaving for school. Iqbal used to wake up around 8.30am,” Khan said.

Police said the crime was discovered when Iqbal’s relative, who runs a medical store in the same building, went to fetch the keys of his shop.

He pushed the door open, went inside and found Iqbal unconscious on the bed. The relative called the police control room and informed police that Iqbal had “committed suicide”.

A police team reached the house and rushed the doctor to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead. A dagger near the body and a ransacked almirah made the police believe Iqbad did not die a natural death.

“Iqbal’s body has been preserved in a government hospital’s mortuary. The autopsy will be conducted on Tuesday by a panel of doctors to ascertain the cause of death,” the DCP said.