Foreigner takes a fatal leap

 

We have found two different articles about the same subject, both are published here, one is from the Deccan Herald, the other is from Times of India.

By Our Staff Reporter

Deccan Herald 20.09.1996

Bangalore, Sept 1996

A 33-year old foreigner jumped off the eighth floor of the State Bank of Mysore building on K.G. Road here this evening to the horror of passersby.  Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Pravin Sood said Richardson Andrew Grant from Johannesburg, South Africa had arrived here today and hired a taxi at the City Railway Station to go around.

In the evening, when the car reached Mysore Bank Circle, he got out, flung some currency notes and travelers´ cheques in the air and ran inside the bank. He climbed up all the way to reach the eighth floor and after shattering the windowpanes, leapt to his death. Death was instantaneous, police said.

Mr. Sood said the man, in a suicide note found in his pocket, said his life was full of confusion and that he had come to India in search of peace. He arrived in the country on September 9 and was said to have visited the Sai Baba Ashram in Whitefield.

The Bangalore police have informed the British High Commission in Madras about the suicide as Richardson was also holding a British passport.   According to Mr. Sood, the body has already been shifted to Madras.

Traffic on the busy K.G. Road was disrupted for over half an hour as hundreds of people gathered at the spot. The aghast taxi driver meanwhile, told police that the man owed him about Rs. 500.

 

He came looking for peace in India

but chose to die

 

Staff Reporter

From: Times of India 20.09.1996

BANGALORE: In a bizarre incident shrouded in mystery, a South Africa-born British national, A.G. Richardson, jumped to his death from the eighth floor of the State Bank of Mysore building on Kempe Gowda Road on Thursday afternoon.

Deputy Commissioner of police (West) Praveen Sood told The Times of India that Richardson (33) went up the SBM building, shattered the eighth-floor window, and leapt out in full view of horrified public and bank staff, 85 feet below, around 3.25 p.m. He died instantly.

The police found his foot mark on the sofa and table next to the window in the lounge of the eighth floor, which houses the office of the managing director and chief general manager of the bank, and the shares department. Though public entry to this floor is not restricted, few people go there on a normal working day apart from the staff, SBM security officers said.

The foreigner left a note in which he described, though incoherently, about his misery that drove him to suicide. "I was confused, I came to India in search of peace , but could not find it," he has said. He apparently visited the Sai Ashram earlier and had seen Sai Baba, as it was mentioned in his suicide note. But the police have not confirmed whether it refers to the one in Whitefield here in Bangalore or the one in Puttaparthi.

Mr. Sood said the letter was barely legible, but stated that he was in deep depression. The police have contacted the British High Commission to trace Richardson´s kin and send the body back to England.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that Richardson arrived in Bangalore by train on Thursday morning and hired a taxi and went round the city. He arrived in Mumbai from Durban on September 9, Mr. Sood added.Richardson asked the driver to stop at a hotel for sometime, but later decided to continue. When he reached the Mysore Bank Circle, he got out of the taxi and threw into the air all the money he had by encashing his Thomas Cook travellers´cheques in the morning and hurried into the SBM premises. He signed the visitors register and ran up the stairs to the eighth floor from where he jumped.

The police suspect that Richardson must have had a deathwish since he came to Bangalore and the purpose of his tour round the city was to find a high-rise building from he could jump.