A 43-year-old Bar­rack­pore man re­turn­ing home from work died when his van plunged in­to a deep drain in Gas­par­il­lo on Sat­ur­day night.

The dis­cov­ery was made by a vil­lager who saw the van sub­merged in the wa­ter and con­tact­ed the po­lice. How­ev­er, the body of Sharaz Baksh was on­ly found yes­ter­day morn­ing sev­er­al hours lat­er.

At around 9.35 pm, the man was walk­ing along Fac­to­ry Road, Re­form Vil­lage, near LP#16 when he saw the black Toy­ota Hilux sub­merged in the wa­ter. The Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion and Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion were con­tact­ed. Po­lice of­fi­cers and fire­fight­ers tried pump­ing out the wa­ter in an at­tempt to find Baksh’s body but were un­suc­cess­ful. A wreck­er re­moved the van from the drain and trans­port­ed it to the po­lice sta­tion.

Even­tu­al­ly, at around 5.50 am Baksh’s body was found by fire of­fi­cers. He was wear­ing his work cov­er­all and steel boots.

The dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer viewed the body and or­dered it’s re­moval to the mor­tu­ary of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In an in­ter­view at their Cu­mu­to Road home, Gain­da Per­sad, 65, said the fam­i­ly got the trag­ic news at around 1 am and they went to the scene.

“Around 2 o’ clock to half-past two the note pad that he have and one of his pen float up in the wa­ter and then they re­alise that he down there, so then they get the pump and bail out the wa­ter and the body was un­der­neath,” she said.

She said there were no marks of vi­o­lence on his body and all Baksh’s be­long­ings were in­tact. She be­lieves he fell asleep at the wheel.

Per­sad said Baksh, who was em­ployed with an en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny in Re­form Vil­lage, had worked late that day.

Baksh, who was sep­a­rat­ed from his wife, was the fa­ther of three chil­dren, ages sev­en, 13 and 15.

“He would not stand up and quar­rel with no­body. He used to be down­stairs and you would not know he around. Al­ways a qui­et per­son from a ba­by,” Per­sad said.

She said she could not shake off feel­ings of un­hap­pi­ness and sad­ness over the past few days.

“Maybe that was a sign,” she said.

Po­lice are await­ing the re­sults of an au­top­sy to­day to de­ter­mine whether foul play was in­volved.

Vis­it­ing the scene were ASP Theodore, In­sp James, PC Per­sad, PC Har­rikissoon, as well as As­sis­tant Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer Dook­ie and Fire Sub Of­fi­cers Lewis and Sam­rath.