Norwegian national found dead in Jaipur hotel

A Norwegian national was found dead in a hotel room where he was staying along with his wife and relatives of Indian origin, police said today.

Qystein Hodne (34), a taxi driver in Norway, was part of a 10-member group which arrived on February 7 to visit the pink city.

They all were scheduled to leave for Delhi on Friday but on Thursday morning he was found in unconscious state in his room.

Hodne had consumed liquor in the night and had apparently fallen from the bed. When his father-in-law Bhagwan Singh, who originally hails from Fatehabad in Haryana, and wife Jaswinder tried to wake him up, he did not react.

Bhagwan Singh said, in his written report to the police, that the doctor who examined Hodne in the morning declared him dead and suspected cardiac arrest to be a possible cause.

Singh also informed police that Hodne had consumed liquor on Wednesday night.

"We rushed Hodne to a nearby government hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. After permission from the Embassy of Norway, postmortem of the body was conducted.

"Viscera has been preserved and anything regarding the exact cause of the death will be clear only after report," Kushal Singh, SHO, Vidhyadhar Nagar said.

"Doctors opined in initial reports that excessive liquor or an internal injury he received in head after he fell off his bed could be the reasons behind his death," he said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Jaipur North, Ashok Naruka, said that a representative of the embassy of Norway will come and after due procedure, the body will be sent to Norway.

SHO Kushal Singh said that he had communicated with the officials of the embassy who told him that they have informed the insurance company in Norway about the death of Hodne.

"The company which insured Hodne will also be involved in the procedure.     The embassy has informed the company office in Norway and the company will depute their representative to assist the procedure," he said.

The group had arrived in India on January 22 to attend a marriage function and were scheduled to leave India on February 10.

After the death of Hodne at Jaipur, the group including his wife and kids and his in-laws left for Delhi.

Jaswinder and kids boarded a flight to Norway yesterday from Delhi, the SHO said.

Hodne had gone for his studies in a university in London where he met Jaswinder who was also studying in the same university. Jaswinder's parents had migrated from Haryana in 1979 and were settled in London.

Some ten years ago, Hodne and Jaswinder got married and settled in Norway while Jaswinder's parents also moved to Australia where they live in Queensland, Kushal Singh said.