The version of Newada residents is that Ali drove his son Gulhasan into committing suicide and then tried to cover it up by skipping post-mortem and taking the body straight to a burial ground. They allege that the newly married Gulhasan was unhappy that his wife was still staying with her parents and would sometimes go to meet her. The night before Gulhasan was found dead, he was allegedly beaten up by his father for these visits.

Ali's version, as noted in the first information report (FIR) dated 27 August, is starkly different. As per his statement, his nephew Dilshad of Newada village held a grudge against him and his son Gulhasan and carried out the killing to get even. In a dispute between Dilshad and one Raju a few days ago, Gulhasan had sided with Raju, and even made Dilshad pay an amount of Rs 60,000 due to him. The statement says that on the eve of 23 July, Dilshad came to Ali's house and took Gulhasan away, saying they both needed to talk. Around half-an-hour later, Ali's elder son saw Dilshad and a group of three other men with Gulhasan on the streets, and they all promised to send his younger brother home soon. The family only found Gulhasan's body the next morning.

As per Ali and his son Irshad (who is now Kavi), they have enough reasons to believe it was a murder. They shared with this correspondent a photograph of Gulhasan's body that shows his lips had turned a dark blue. Irshad says his brother was most probably poisoned.

"When we found the body, it had injury marks on it. The hook was too close to the ground for hanging oneself to death," he said. "He was killed and hanged there only as a cover-up."

Ali says that as soon as they found the body, a crowd of 300-400 people got into his house and started accusing him of killing his son. “It was they who weren’t allowing for the post-mortem,” he alleges.

Ali says that on the very same evening, he went to the local police and recorded his statement, but a sub-inspector named Dharamendra Singh Sandhu tore off the complaint. "He had been bribed by the other side," Ali alleges. "We then went to the court, and it was on the direction of the court that an FIR was registered more than a month later."