New Delhi: The city of Rayagada in southern Odisha is suddenly in the news all over the world after it emerged that one of the two Russians who died in quick succession over two days in a local hotel was a lawmaker and a millionaire tycoon.
Here is what we know so far about the two deaths in the town which is around 375 kilometres from the state capital of Bhubaneswar.
Sequence of events
On the evening of December 21, a group of four Russian nationals, accompanied by an Indian guide, checked themselves into the Sai International hotel in Rayagada. The guide, Jitendra Singh, told the Times of India that the group had flown from Delhi to Bhubaneswar on December 19. Then they travelled to Daringibadi in Kandhamal district on December 20, followed by Rayagada the next day.
On the morning of December 22, one of them, 62-year-old Vladimir Bydanov, had to be rushed to the local hospital after being found unconscious in the room on the first floor.
Singh claimed that Bydanov had a heart ailment and had been drinking since he arrived in Odisha.
As per local media reports, Bydanov and Antov had been drinking heavily, which probably led to the former’s death. According to the police, Bydanov died from a “heart stroke”. His body was cremated after the local police informed the Russian diplomatic authorities and were informed that his family could not travel to India.
Two days later, his hotel roommate, Pavel Antov, was found lying in a pool of blood outside the hotel.
The successive and unusual deaths of the two Russians sent “shockwaves” across the city, as per a local media report.
In the initial reports, the local media identified him as “Pavel Anthem”. They quoted ‘sources’ as saying that he jumped from the third floor after attending Bydanov’s cremation. Some of those reports noted that Pavel had been visibly distressed.
The two remaining Russians, identified as Natalia Pansasenko and Mikhail Turov, who were reportedly attempting to leave Rayagada after Bydanov’s death, were questioned. However, they seemed to have been allowed to leave the hotel on Tuesday, December 27.
Who is Pavel Antov?
On Monday evening, the identity of the second Russian national was confirmed as that of Pavel Antov, a lawmaker from the regional parliament of Vladimir Oblast provinces. He was one of 38 members of the legislative assembly whose five-year terms were to end in September 2023.
Describing him as an entrepreneur, Russian news agency TASS added that the Russian lawmaker also chaired the Assembly’s committee on Agrarian Policy, Environmental Management and Ecology. He celebrated his 65th birthday in India on December 22.
In 2019, Antov topped the Forbes list of wealthiest Russian lawmakers and civil servants. His fortune was estimated at $140 million as the founder of the Vladimir Standard meat processing plant. However, his rank fell drastically within a year and he was listed at number 26 in 2020. As per his Forbes profile, he was married with a daughter.
In Forbes’ list of the 100 richest Russian lawmakers and civil servants for 2021, Antov had disappeared.
The Vladimir Oblast legislative assembly’s deputy chairman Vyacheslav Kartukhin announced on his Telegram channel that Pavel Genrikhovich Antov died as a result of “tragic circumstances”. “On behalf of the deputies of the United Russia faction, I express my deep condolences to the relatives and friends,” he wrote.
The last time that Antov’s name was in the grapevine was thanks to reasons that have pushed his death under global spotlight.
According to BBC, a WhatsApp message on Antov’s account appeared to criticise the Russian missile attack on a residential block in Kyiv in June. The message read, “It’s extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror”.
After this message was deleted, Antov said that it was not his own post, but by another whose opinion on the Ukraine war he disagreed with strongly. He asserted that it was posted on his messenger by accident. Antov insisted that he was a “patriot”, backing the Ukraine war and President Vladimir Putin.
‘Unnatural’ deaths and Russia
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, a series of deaths of Russian businessmen and corporate executives has fuelled speculation in western media.
In April this year, a former manager of Novotek, Sergey Protosenya, was found dead at a villa in Spanish, along with his wife and teenage daughter. While the two women had stab wounds, Protosenya was found hanging in the yard. A former vice president of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avayev, was found shot dead with his wife and 13-year-old daughter in their Moscow apartment in the same month.
Then in September, the chairman of Russian oil company Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, died after falling from a window of a hospital where he was being treated for cardiac arrest. A week after the Russian invasion, Lukoil had called for “the immediate cessation of the armed conflict” and expressed “deepest concerns about the tragic events in Ukraine”.
Pavel Antov’s death, observes The Washington Post, is the “latest incident this year involving Russian tycoons and high-profile oil and gas executives”.
Do Russian tourists visit Rayagada usually?
Speaking to The Wire, a hotel official noted that nearly all rooms in the Rayagada hotel were fully booked with foreign tourists who come to experience the tribal regions of Odisha. He claimed that while French and Italians topped the list of foreign tourists, Russians and Australians were not far behind.
Therefore, a group of four Russian nationals checking in was was nothing unusual, claimed the hotel official. All four had booked the hotel through a Delhi-based travel agency.
How has Antov’s identity impacted the Indian police investigation?
The police continue to still believe that Bydanov had died from his prevailing heart condition, while Antov took his own life.
As reported earlier, Bydanov was cremated a day after his death. The Hindu has reported that Antov’s body, too, was cremated. The Wire has not been able to confirm this. The final post-mortem report is awaited.
On December 27 evening, Odisha police announced that Director General of Police Sunil Bansal had transferred the two cases of “unnatural deaths of two Russian nationals” registered at Rayagada police station to the CID-Crime Branch for full-fledged inquiry.
DGP, Odisha has ordered CID-Crime Branch to take over enquiry into Rayagada Police Station UD Case No.34/2022 & No.35/2022. These cases relates to unnatural death of two Russian nationals in Rayagada Dist. @CIDOdisha
— Odisha Police (@odisha_police) December 27, 2022
How has Russia responded?
TASS had reported as early as Monday, December 26, that Russian diplomats do not suspect any foul play in the death of the two Russians. It quoted the Russian consul general in Kolkata, Alexey Idamkin, as stating that Odisha police did not find any criminal element in the two deaths.
“A tourist group of four people was relaxing in a hotel in Rayagada. Last Thursday, Russian Vladimir B. died. According to the police, the cause of this was a heart attack. Last Saturday, the second Russian, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Vladimir region, Pavel Antov, fell out of the window. We are closely monitoring the investigation and receiving all the information from the Odisha police,” an unnamed source told the Russian news agency.
The state-run Russia Today posted a statement from the Russian embassy on its Telegram channel for Indian viewers on Monday evening.
“We are aware of the tragic demise of two Russian citizens in Odisha. The embassy said one of those who died is Pavel Antov, a Vladimir Region Legislative Assembly member. The Consulate General of Russia in Kolkata is following the case in touch with local authorities. According to information available to the police, no criminal aspect is seen,” said the statement.
This was re-posted by the Russian embassy on its Telegram channel, a day later on Tuesday.
There has been no further statement after the announcement by the Odisha police of transfer of the case to the CID.
So far, Indian officials are treating this as an exclusive consular matter for the Russian authorities.