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A fall that doesn’t add up
| Anamika Gharat anamika.gharat@timesofindia.com | Dec 12, 2025, 04:00 IST
A young man feared he would be killed. His death was ruled a fall. His mother says the truth lies elsewhere
The death of 28-year-old Sunil Lalbahadur Kewat on April 9, 2025, has now reached the Bombay High Court after his mother, Subavati Kewat (56), filed a petition accusing Oshiwara Police of ignoring clear signs of foul play, mishandling medical and forensic evidence, and refusing to register an FIR despite repeated complaints.
Her petition urges the court to examine whether her son’s death was prematurely labelled an accident without even the most basic investigative steps.
Sunil was the younger son of Subavati and Bahadur Kewat (60), a rickshaw driver who once drove an auto but had left that job after Sunil began supporting the family. After Sunil’s death, Bahadur was forced to take up driving again to keep the household running.
Grief, warnings and a death shrouded in doubt
A year before losing Sunil, the family had already lost Raju (35), Sunil’s elder brother, an Ola driver who died in a road accident. Sunil stepped in immediately, taking responsibility for Raju’s wife and children and becoming the family’s emotional anchor. Talks of his marriage had just begun.
“After losing Raju, all my hopes were on Sunil,” Subavati recalls.
But those nightly calls became increasingly unsettling. According to the petition, Sunil, who worked as a dumper driver in the Jogeshwari–Oshiwara belt, repeatedly told his mother he was being harassed by dumper owners Sachin Chavan and his brother Ritesh. The trouble reportedly escalated in late 2024 when he reversed the dumper into a parked car in Navi Mumbai. The car’s windshield cracked, and the petition states he returned home with chest pain from a beating allegedly inflicted by the owners.
From December 2024 onward, Sunil allegedly came home bruised and frightened. The petition says he told his mother the Chavan brothers abused, bullied, and threatened to kill him. “These people will not leave me,” he whispered once. “They will kill me one day.”
Subavati urged him to quit, but Sunil refused. The family needed the income, and he felt responsible for his late brother’s children.
The final days
On April 7, Sunil returned home after another alleged assault. The next day, the conflict reportedly escalated sharply. According to the petition, he told his family he feared for his life. On April 9, he left for his night shift between 10.30 and 11.00 am. He never returned.
By the next morning, his phone had fallen silent. His supervisor allegedly told Subavati he had already gone home. She began searching alone through lanes, dumping yards and half-built structures. Later, some local boys told her an unconscious man was lying beneath a metro bridge near -----
. She rushed there and froze. Under the elevated metro line, Sunil lay sprawled on an iron bench – injured, unresponsive, but still breathing. “My son was alive, but barely,” she says in the petition. “This place was strange. He never visited there. And the police later claimed he fell from a dumper – there was no dumper, no witness, nothing.”
Locals helped her take him to Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Care Hospital. Doctors tried to revive him, but soon declared him dead. “The doctors and police did not tell us the reason,” she says. “Despite everything we told them, they kept saying it was a simple fall.”
Lapses and contradictions
According to the petition, Oshiwara Police registered only an Accidental Death Report (ADR) despite visible injuries and the family’s statements about prior assaults. The family alleges police did not record their full complaint, did not question the accused men, did not examine earlier beatings, and did not check CCTV footage. The possibility of homicidal violence, they say, was never considered.
The petition lists procedural lapses: contradictions between the inquest and the post-mortem, failure to conduct a mandatory magistrate inquest under Section 176 CrPC, and the premature issuance of a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to dispose of the body before forensic or histopathology reports were ready. Under medico-legal norms, NOCs are not issued in suspicious or unnatural deaths. Yet one was allegedly issued almost immediately.
Doctors reportedly noted a circular injury on Sunil’s back, an older chest injury, and other marks inconsistent with a simple fall. None were recorded in the police inquest. According to the petition, these discrepancies legally required a fresh panchnama before a Magistrate – something that never happened.
The spot where Sunil was found, the petition states, did not indicate a fall from a dumper. There was no vehicle, no eyewitness, and it was far from his work route. Still, the fall theory became the official conclusion.
Post the petition, the Bombay High Court has stepped in more broadly, expressing deep concern over police apathy in several cases, one of them being Sunil’s. The Bench of Justice AS Gadkari and Justice Ranjitsinha Bhosle has now directed the Director of the Central Forensic Science Laboratories (CSFL) to submit the final forensic report within a week, with the matter to be considered again thereafter.
After months of pleading with local police for an FIR, the family says they lost faith in the system. With the help of advocates Parvez Memon and Chirag Naik of MZM Legal LLP, representing them pro bono, Subavati turned to the HC in the hope of an independent investigation.
When asked about the matter, Oshiwara police station senior police inspector Sanjay Chavhan said, “I cannot comment on the matter.”
For Subavati, this fight is about dignity and truth. “My son feared he would be killed,” she says. “He told me every day. But nobody listened. Now I want justice, not only for him but for every poor person whose voice is ignored.”
The HC is now examining the petition, a mother’s attempt to ensure her son’s death is not dismissed as an accident without confronting the questions that still linger in the shadows of that metro bridge.
Her petition urges the court to examine whether her son’s death was prematurely labelled an accident without even the most basic investigative steps.
Sunil was the younger son of Subavati and Bahadur Kewat (60), a rickshaw driver who once drove an auto but had left that job after Sunil began supporting the family. After Sunil’s death, Bahadur was forced to take up driving again to keep the household running.
Grief, warnings and a death shrouded in doubt
A year before losing Sunil, the family had already lost Raju (35), Sunil’s elder brother, an Ola driver who died in a road accident. Sunil stepped in immediately, taking responsibility for Raju’s wife and children and becoming the family’s emotional anchor. Talks of his marriage had just begun.
“After losing Raju, all my hopes were on Sunil,” Subavati recalls.
But those nightly calls became increasingly unsettling. According to the petition, Sunil, who worked as a dumper driver in the Jogeshwari–Oshiwara belt, repeatedly told his mother he was being harassed by dumper owners Sachin Chavan and his brother Ritesh. The trouble reportedly escalated in late 2024 when he reversed the dumper into a parked car in Navi Mumbai. The car’s windshield cracked, and the petition states he returned home with chest pain from a beating allegedly inflicted by the owners.
From December 2024 onward, Sunil allegedly came home bruised and frightened. The petition says he told his mother the Chavan brothers abused, bullied, and threatened to kill him. “These people will not leave me,” he whispered once. “They will kill me one day.”
Subavati urged him to quit, but Sunil refused. The family needed the income, and he felt responsible for his late brother’s children.
The final days
On April 7, Sunil returned home after another alleged assault. The next day, the conflict reportedly escalated sharply. According to the petition, he told his family he feared for his life. On April 9, he left for his night shift between 10.30 and 11.00 am. He never returned.
By the next morning, his phone had fallen silent. His supervisor allegedly told Subavati he had already gone home. She began searching alone through lanes, dumping yards and half-built structures. Later, some local boys told her an unconscious man was lying beneath a metro bridge near -----
. She rushed there and froze. Under the elevated metro line, Sunil lay sprawled on an iron bench – injured, unresponsive, but still breathing. “My son was alive, but barely,” she says in the petition. “This place was strange. He never visited there. And the police later claimed he fell from a dumper – there was no dumper, no witness, nothing.”
Locals helped her take him to Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Care Hospital. Doctors tried to revive him, but soon declared him dead. “The doctors and police did not tell us the reason,” she says. “Despite everything we told them, they kept saying it was a simple fall.”
Lapses and contradictions
According to the petition, Oshiwara Police registered only an Accidental Death Report (ADR) despite visible injuries and the family’s statements about prior assaults. The family alleges police did not record their full complaint, did not question the accused men, did not examine earlier beatings, and did not check CCTV footage. The possibility of homicidal violence, they say, was never considered.
The petition lists procedural lapses: contradictions between the inquest and the post-mortem, failure to conduct a mandatory magistrate inquest under Section 176 CrPC, and the premature issuance of a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to dispose of the body before forensic or histopathology reports were ready. Under medico-legal norms, NOCs are not issued in suspicious or unnatural deaths. Yet one was allegedly issued almost immediately.
Doctors reportedly noted a circular injury on Sunil’s back, an older chest injury, and other marks inconsistent with a simple fall. None were recorded in the police inquest. According to the petition, these discrepancies legally required a fresh panchnama before a Magistrate – something that never happened.
The spot where Sunil was found, the petition states, did not indicate a fall from a dumper. There was no vehicle, no eyewitness, and it was far from his work route. Still, the fall theory became the official conclusion.
Post the petition, the Bombay High Court has stepped in more broadly, expressing deep concern over police apathy in several cases, one of them being Sunil’s. The Bench of Justice AS Gadkari and Justice Ranjitsinha Bhosle has now directed the Director of the Central Forensic Science Laboratories (CSFL) to submit the final forensic report within a week, with the matter to be considered again thereafter.
After months of pleading with local police for an FIR, the family says they lost faith in the system. With the help of advocates Parvez Memon and Chirag Naik of MZM Legal LLP, representing them pro bono, Subavati turned to the HC in the hope of an independent investigation.
When asked about the matter, Oshiwara police station senior police inspector Sanjay Chavhan said, “I cannot comment on the matter.”
For Subavati, this fight is about dignity and truth. “My son feared he would be killed,” she says. “He told me every day. But nobody listened. Now I want justice, not only for him but for every poor person whose voice is ignored.”
The HC is now examining the petition, a mother’s attempt to ensure her son’s death is not dismissed as an accident without confronting the questions that still linger in the shadows of that metro bridge.
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