Times of India 20.09.1996

He came looking for peace in India but chose to die
Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: In a bizarre incident shrouded in mystery, a South Africa-born British national, A.G. Richardson, jumped to his death from the eighth floor of the State Bank of Mysore building on Kempe Gowda Road on Thursday afternoon.

Deputy Commissioner of police (West) Praveen Sood told The Times of India that Richardson (33) went up the SBM building, shattered the eighth-floor window, and leapt out in full view of horrified public and bank staff, 85 feet below, around 3.25 p.m. He died instantly.

The police found his foot mark on the sofa and table next to the window in the lounge of the eighth floor, which houses the office of the managing
director and chief general manager of the bank, and the shares department. Though public entry to this floor is not restricted, few people go there on a normal working day apart from the staff, SBM security officers said.

The foreigner left a note in which he described, though incoherently, about his misery that drove him to suicide. "I was confused, I came to India
in search of peace , but could not find it," he has said. He apparently visited the Sai Ashram earlier and had seen Sai Baba, as it was mentioned in his suicide note. But the police have not confirmed whether it refers to the one in Whitefield here in Bangalore or the one in Puttaparthi.

Mr. Sood said the letter was barely legible, but stated that he was in deep depression. The police have contacted the British High Commission to trace Richardson´s kin and send the body back to England.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that Richardson arrived in Bangalore by train on Thursday morning and hired a taxi and went round the
city. He arrived in Mumbai from Durban on September 9, Mr. Sood added.Richardson asked the driver to stop at a hotel for sometime, but later
decided to continue. When he reached the Mysore Bank Circle, he got out of the taxi and threw into the air all the money he had by encashing his Thomas Cook travellers´cheques in the morning and hurried into the SBM premises. He signed the visitors register and ran up the stairs to the eighth floor from where he jumped.

The police suspect that Richardson must have had a deathwish since he came to Bangalore and the purpose of his tour round the city was to find a high-rise building from he could jump.