'It was suicide, Jamwal shot point blank'

Police officers in Kerala stuck to their theory that Rear Admiral S.S. Jamwal, the chief of staff of the Southern Naval Command had committed suicide in Kochi on Wednesday and his death was no freak accident as claimed by the naval authorities.

Police officers in Kerala stuck to their theory that Rear Admiral S.S. Jamwal, the chief of staff of the Southern Naval Command had committed suicide in Kochi on Wednesday and his death was no freak accident as claimed by the naval authorities.

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A senior police officer told HT on condition of anonymity that the bullet had entered 1 cm above Jamwal’s right ear and exited 3 cm above his left.

“The bullet hit the rear admiral from point-blank range. If the muzzle (of the 9mm Beretta pistol) had pointed towards him mistakenly, he would have been hit in the face,” the officer said.

The police, however, declined to disclose the contents of the post-mortem report submitted by doctors at the Alapuzha Medical College Hospital, 150 km from the state capital.

Naval authorities had claimed Jamwal, the second-most senior officer of the navy’s southern command, died on board the INS Dronacharya (gunnery school) when the pistol he was using jammed and misfired suddenly as he tried to examine what had gone wrong with it.