A man with a Guinness World Record for travelling the farthest distance on a zip wire attached to a tuft of his hair died while performing the stunt across the Teesta at Sevoke near Siliguri in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district on Sunday.

Sailendra Nath Roy (48) was trying to cross the river suspended from a 600 feet zip cable at a height of 70 feet near the Coronation Bridge. A large number of people had gathered to watch the act.

After covering about 40 per cent of the distance, Mr. Roy could not progress further. Amidst cheers and screams of hundreds of onlookers, he desperately tried to move forward, hanging from the cable and using his hand to inch ahead. Suddenly, there was no movement, and after about 45 minutes, he was brought down.

Mr. Roy was rushed to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. He had suffered a massive heart attack.

“Mr. Roy was a home guard with the Siliguri Metropolitan Police. He was a professional stunt man and had performed such acts across the country and abroad. He was on leave today,” K. Jayaraman, Commissioner of the Siliguri Metropolitan Police, told The Hindu over the telephone.

According to eyewitnesses, there was no deployment of personnel from the disaster management group or local police for the event.

Mr. Roy held the Guinness World Record for covering a distance of 270 feet on a zip wire attached to a tuft of his hair at Neemrana Fort Palace in Alwar district in Rajasthan on March 1, 2011.

He had also pulled a toy train of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway with a chain attached to the tuft of his hair for 2.5 meters in Siliguri in September, 2012.