Russian sausage magnate Pavel Antov, who is also a lawmaker, died after falling from an Indian hotel window on Saturday, said Indian police as an investigation is underway.
The death of the billionaire came after his friend and travel companion, Vladimir Budanov, lost his life due to a heart attack on Antov's 65th birthday, which was two days earlier. The news was announced by a senior police official in India's northeastern Odisha state, Vivekanand Sharma, on Tuesday.
Russian Sausage Magnate Dies
Sharma noted that Budanov was 61 years old when he lost his life and had a pre-existing heart condition. Law enforcement authorities believe that Antov died by suicide after falling from the third floor of a hotel that was located in the Rayagada district.
However, a postmortem report of the Russian magnate's death has not yet been released, said the police official. Sharma said that the case had been ruled an "unnatural death," which includes deaths resulting from accidents and suicides.
Russian state news agency TASS said that Antov, who was a businessman and member of a regional parliament in the Vladimir region in western Russia, had celebrated his 65th birthday on Dec. 22, as per CNN.
The billionaire topped the Forbes ranking of the 100 richest civil servants in Russia in 2018 as his income at the time amounted to roughly $14 billion. He was also a member of the United Russia Party which was formerly led by Putin and is still a supporter of the Russian president.
Last June, Antov pledged his support for the Russian strongman after he was forced to deny having posted an anti-war message on WhatsApp. He then blamed an "unfortunate misunderstanding and a technical error" for the situation, adding that the status had been deleted.
According to Yahoo News, Antov's death is the latest in a series of unexplained and sometimes mysterious deaths that involve Russian tycoons since the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine. Many of the individuals were openly critical of Putin's invasion.
A Series of Mysterious Deaths
Alexei Idamkin, the Russian consul in Kolkata, said that the law enforcement authorities did not see a "criminal element" in the tragic events that led to Antov's death. In a statement, Jitendra Singh, a tourist guide, said that Budanov may have "consumed a lot of alcohol as he had liquor bottles."
Antov is known for founding the Vladimir Standard meat processing plant and played a crucial role at the legislative assembly in Vladimir. He headed a committee on agrarian policy and ecology. The deputy chairman of the assembly, Vyacheslav Kartukhin, described the tycoon's death as being in "tragic circumstances."
Over the past few months, a number of Russian businessmen have mysteriously died as Moscow grows continuously dissatisfied with its performance in the war against Ukraine. This includes Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russian oil giant Lukoil.
Maganov died after he reportedly fell from the sixth-floor window of a Moscow hospital on Sept. 1. He and his company had previously urged President Putin to put an end to the invasion, calling the conflict a "tragedy," Fox News reported.
