London: A 20-year-old Indian asylum seeker
in Austria, who had died last week while on a hunger strike to
protest his detention, was killed by a heart attack,
authorities said on Tuesday.
"An autopsy had shown he had died of a heart attack and
that further examinations were being carried out to determine
if the hunger strike and the heart attack had been linked,"
Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for Vienna public prosecutor’s
office, said.
Gaganpreet Singh, who had been in preventive detention
since August 4 and was refusing to eat since August 7, died at
the Vienna-Hernals police centre on September 14.
Singh had claimed asylum four years ago under fake
identity and told authorities he was 17. Police recently
discovered his real age is 32 when they tried to contact his
family in India, the Austrain Times reported.
Human rights campaigners have called for speedy
clarification of the circumstances of his death.
Bureau Report
