The sus­pect in the death of Bar­rack­pore lor­ry man An­to­nio Man­ickc­hand from a bru­tal beat­ing has gone miss­ing. Po­lice con­firmed that the 27-year-old sus­pect’s fa­ther re­port­ed him miss­ing on Mon­day, one day be­fore Man­ickc­hand suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Man­ickc­hand, 25, of Rees Road, was at the Sky Lab Bar on Kan­hai Road North around 11.50 pm Sat­ur­day when a fight broke out. He suf­fered se­vere head in­juries and his par­ents, Cassie and Seechan, took him to the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty where medics sta­bilised him be­fore he was trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Man­ickc­hand’s moth­er told Guardian Me­dia that he un­der­went surgery on Mon­day to re­con­struct parts of his face and looked well af­ter the surgery. She said the fam­i­ly was hope­ful he would re­cov­er but those hopes were dashed when a doc­tor called her on Tues­day morn­ing with the dev­as­tat­ing news.

“We said he was sta­ble be­cause he is go­ing in the ward. Yes­ter­day (Tues­day) morn­ing, I got up and I got a kind of vibe like some­thing was wrong. The phone rang at 7.44 am. I will al­ways re­mem­ber that time. The way the per­son talked to me, I knew my child was gone,” she said.

She said doc­tors were shocked at his death as he was sta­ble af­ter the surgery.

The po­lice have now launched a homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion and are await­ing an au­top­sy re­port.

Cassie Man­ickc­hand showed bruis­es on her arm which she said she sus­tained when she was struck sev­er­al times as she tried to pro­tect her son from his as­sailant.

She said her son went to sup­port her hus­band who was play­ing in an All Fours com­pe­ti­tion at the bar and they were stand­ing out­side when Man­ickc­hand was struck in the back of his head with a wheel span­ner. 

“My son passed away, and he does not know who hit him up be­cause he got the lash from the back. When he fell, I do not know what made me turn around, and I saw him on the ground, and I start­ed to bawl and tell the fel­la, ‘What are you do­ing to my son?’ He was steadi­ly hit­ting him in his head, and when I could not brakes it any more, I ran in­side and called my hus­band.”

Cassie be­lieves the at­tack on her son was linked to an al­ter­ca­tion at a Moth­er’s Day event last May when her four sons came to her de­fence. How­ev­er, she is con­fi­dent she will get jus­tice as many peo­ple are look­ing for the sus­pect.

“It is not nice, you know, that feel­ing of know­ing my child is gone. I have to burn my child for noth­ing. If he did in­ter­fere with the boy if he did tell him some­thing, it was some­thing dif­fer­ent, but the thing is, there is video footage show­ing what he did. The po­lice have the footage. The po­lice have the iron. It is just that they can­not lo­cate him be­cause he is hid­ing,” she said.