MOSCOW—A Russian politician and businessman died after falling from the roof of a hotel in India on Christmas Eve, police said, two days after a companion succumbed to a heart attack and months after he was in the media spotlight for a quickly retracted WhatsApp post deemed critical of Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.
Authorities in the eastern Indian state of Odisha said they were investigating the deaths of the two men, Pavel Antov, a 65-year-old regional lawmaker from western Russia who owned a sausage-making company, and Vladimir Bydanov, 61, with whom he had been sharing a room.
Rashmi Ranjan Pradhan, inspector-in-charge of the police station in Rayagada, where the hotel is located, said an autopsy had found that Mr. Bydanov died of a heart attack. As for Mr. Antov, he said, “Whether he fell or committed suicide—that will be part of the circumstantial evidence of our investigation.”
A senior Odisha state police official said there was no indication of foul play in either death but that “police are investigating from all angles.”
Mr. Antov’s demise follows the deaths of several other high-profile Russians in violent or mysterious circumstances in recent months.
In September,
Ravil Maganov,
the chairman of Lukoil PJSC, Russia’s second-largest oil-and-gas company and one of very few Russian corporations to openly call for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, died after falling from a sixth-floor hospital window in Moscow, according to state news agency TASS.
He had been hospitalized for a heart attack and was also taking antidepressants, the news agency said. In a statement, Lukoil said Mr. Maganov, 67 years old, died following a serious illness.
In May, Alexander Subbotin, a former Lukoil senior manager, was found dead in a house in a city on the outskirts of Moscow, according to TASS. The Moscow prosecutor’s office and Russia’s main investigative committee didn’t respond to a request for information on the case.
In April, Vladislav Avaev, a former vice president at Russia’s third-largest bank, Gazprombank, his wife and daughter were found dead in their Moscow apartment, according to TASS. Police were looking into whether Mr. Avaev killed them before killing himself in a domestic conflict, the agency said.
Prosecutors, investigators and Gazprombank didn’t respond to requests for…
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