Pune: An international acrobatic athlete serving with the Indian Army was found hanging from a tree under mysterious circumstances near his residence at Kusmade Colony in Mhaske Vasti on Pune-Alandi road on Wednesday morning.A water pipe was tied around the neck of the deceased, Subedar Siddesh Bhosale (34), police said. “His hands were bound with the same pipe, which raises suspicion. We are collecting CCTV footage from nearby areas to find out how he came out of his house and other things. An accidental death case has been registered for now,” said deputy commissioner of police (Zone IV) Chilumula Rajnikanth.Bhosale was part of an eight-member Indian team that won a bronze medal at the 10th Acrobatic Gymnastics Asian Championship held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in September 2017, according to a social media post by the Army’s public information wing.DCP (Zone IV) Rajnikanth said the advanced post-mortem report revealed that Subedar Bhosale died due to hanging. “But his hands were tied. This particular aspect was unusual. Hence, we are probing other aspects such as his personal life, financial conditions and his work station, among others. If evidence suggests homicide, we will convert the case accordingly.”Preliminary inquiries indicated that Bhosale might have been under stress, the police said, but the exact reasons were unclear.Bhosale is survived by his wife and children.The deceased was with an engineer regiment of Bombay Sappers, currently located at College of Military Engineering. He was with the Army’s acrobatic node in Bengaluru for training.Bhosale was excellent in sports and so he was promoted to the Subedar rank, a source in the Army told TOI. He won multiple medals in national and international events in the last one decade, he added.
