The millionaire Pavel Antov
The death of the Russian tycoon and politician Pavel Antov, who fell from the third floor of a hotel in India days after the death of one of his travel companions, is being investigated by the Police, who yesterday stated that they give priority to the hypothesis of suicide.
The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was found on Saturday in a pool of blood outside the place where he was staying in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, where he was enjoying a holiday with three other Russian citizens.
Antov died two days after one of his companions, Vladimir Bidenov, was found unconscious after allegedly suffering a heart attack in the same hotel.
“At the moment it appears that Antov accidentally fell off the hotel terrace,” said regional police chief Rajesh Pandit. “Probably disturbed by the death of his friend, he went to the terrace of the hotel and possibly fell from there,” he added.
Antov, who represented Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, had been a member of a regional parliament 150km east of Moscow since 2018.
Before going into politics, he founded a food processing company and in 2019 was ranked by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine as the richest of all lawmakers and top officials in the country.
In June, Russian media published a WhatsApp message that they attributed to Antov, in which he called a Kremlin bombardment of Ukraine “terrorism.” The deputy denied the accusations and insisted that he supported Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
