Jayantibhai Agechaniya, a resident of Manharpur-2, collapsed inside the investigation room of the Kuvadva Road police station after 2 am, the police said. He was rushed to the state government-run Rajkot civil hospital (Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Government Hospital), where the doctors declared him dead.

Raju Bhargav, the commissioner of police of Rajkot, said, “Yesterday (Tuesday), there was a raid on a gambling den and Agechaniya was picked up and taken to Kuvadva Road police station. Subsequently, we contacted his family members to bail him out. But his wife lived separately and his sons refused to come. In the meantime, he collapsed inside the police station. We took him to hospital where he was declared dead,” Bharvag said.

The police commissioner said a panel of doctors conducted a forensic postmortem examination of Agechaniya. “The primary postmortem report has kept the cause of death pending, waiting for the results of his viscera analysis and histopathological tests,” said Bhargav.

Prima facie, he was not subjected to any custodial torture. We have all the videos of the incident and they don’t show anything of that nature.”

According to the FIR registered at the Kuvadva Road police station at 1.05 am on Wednesday, after getting a tip-off, head constables Yashpalsinh Jadeja and Karamshi Palaliya raided a gambling den behind the pumping station of Indian Oil Corporation Limited in Gavaridad village on the outskirts of the city at 10.15 pm on Tuesday.

During the raid, with two home guards’ help, the constables found four men, including Agechaniya, gambling using the lights of their mobile phone torches near a slum pocket. The other three were identified as Dhana Chauhan, 35, Lakha Vakatar, 40 and Ranjit Makwana, 40. They are residents of Manharpur-1, Santoshinagar and Gavaridad, respectively. While Chauhan is a scrap collector, the others were casual labourers, the police said.

During the raid, police found Agechaniya in possession of Rs 52,800 cash and Chauhan Rs 3,100. From Vakatar and Makwana, the police seized Rs 4,300 and Rs 2,500, respectively.

The police said some other accused were also inside the investigation room when Agechaniya collapsed. After he was declared dead, a magistrate did the inquest panchnama and the police said they were treating the incident as a custodial death case.

The police said MR Sharma, assistant commissioner of police (north zone), had been assigned an inquiry into the incident while a judicial enquiry would also be conducted parallelly.

“Agechaniya, who was asked to sit in the investigation room, collapsed at 2.15 am and became unconscious. The policemen tried to bring him back to consciousness by shaking his limbs and sprinkling water on his face but to no avail. Subsequently, he was rushed to the civil hospital in a 108 service ambulance but the doctors declared him dead at 3.15 am,” Sharma said.

Agenchaniya’s family members initially refused to claim the body but agreed to do that and cremate him after the forensic post mortem and the police assured them of a thorough probe.