IIT Kharagpur student was shot, stabbed, reveals probe 2 years after his death

Two years after IIT-Kharagpur student Faizan Ahmed’s semi-decomposed body was found in a hostel on October 14, 2022, the latest forensic report has claimed that the 23-year-old mechanical engineering student was allegedly murdered.

There was a gunshot wound on the upper left side of Faizan’s neck and a stab wound on the right side of his neck, according to the forensic report by Dr Ajay Gupta who conducted the latest post-mortem on the exhumed body in the IIT Kharagpur student death case. He said this was the second post-mortem.

"During the post-mortem, we found that there were some gaps in the skull ball, which corroborated with the blood. From the presence of the findings, I gave the opinion that it was due to profuse haemorrhage leading to shock. It was antimortem homicidal in nature. In all probability, enough injuries are called on the upper part of the neck. They concluded the second opinion that there was a contact gun shot over the front of the upper part of the north below the left angle of the lower below the lobe of the left ear. Gun shot in this area amounts to murder," Dr Ajay Gupta told India Today.

In 2022, days before Faizan’s body was found, his family had said their son was killed. It is only after the second post-mortem was ordered by the Calcutta High Court and conducted at the Kolkata Police Morgue on May 27, 2023, was it revealed that the right temporal bone of Faizan’s skull was missing, and it matched the still photographs from the day his body was found in a decomposed state.

The report ruled out poisoning, which had been previously suspected in an earlier report.

The Calcutta High Court had ordered Faizan’s body to be exhumed from Dibrugarh to carry out a forensic examination by a court-appointed expert, Dr Ajay Gupta, a retired professor of forensic medicine and technology, who was tasked to examine Faizan’s post-mortem reports and ascertain the cause and manner of his death.

(With inputs from Arindam Bhattacharjee)