PE registered in Lalu daughter's friend Abhishek Mishra's death

New Delhi, Mar 12 (UNI) A preliminary enquiry into the mysterious death of BIT-Mesra student Abhishek Mishra, who died during an excursion with Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's daughter Ragini and two other friends was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation today.

Investigations into the matter are already underway by the central agency after the Jharkhand High Court ordered a CBI probe into the mysterious drowning of Abhishek, an engineering student and a friend of railway minister Lalu Prasad's daughter Ragini.

S C Mishra, father of Abhishek, while maintaining that the death was unnatural, had sent a letter seeking a CBI inquiry to the Jharkhand High Court, which converted the letter into a writ petition, sought a probe by the state government and appointed an amicus curiae.

The CBI is investigating whether Abhishek was murdered or died a natural death due to drowning.

Abhishek, a 24-year-old Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) student studying computer science, apparently drowned at the Dassam falls near Ranchi in Jharkhand on December 8 when he had gone for a picnic with Ragini Yadav and two other friends - Bharat Anand, nephew of BJP legislator Rabindra Rai and Vishal Pandey.

His father, a doctor at the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital here, later said that it was Ragini who called him to inform him that Abhishek had drowned in the falls.

Mishra also accepted that his son and Ragini were ''very good friends'' for almost three years. ''Ragini used to phone me quite often. They were very good friends,'' he maintained.

Later autopsy revealed that there was no water in Abhishek's lungs, whereas in cases of drowning, water fills the lungs, and that blood was found in his heart.

UNI