A BERKS man died while on holiday in India after being attacked by four men with a gun, a coroner was told.

Charanjeet Singh had gotten into a dispute with a neighbour over a parking spot at the apartment where he was staying in Jalandhar, a city in the state of Punjab.

The 66-year-old retired assembly worker had been confronted on the street by a group of four men over the disagreement and was attacked, his family told Reading coroner’s court.

A family statement provided by Bipanjit Puar said a security guard witnessed ‘an altercation where my father was attacked by the men. My father fell to the ground and lost consciousness’.

Mr Singh, from Slough, was taken to hospital by the men who had allegedly attacked him, the family said. But the men later returned and took the CCTV from the apartment complex, they added.

“Another male resident ran after the men to try and stop them but when he approached them he was held at gun point”, the family statement said.

Police in Punjab had investigated the incident but the family said they felt they had not been provided with any updates on the situation.

“We are appalled by the and disappointed with the attempts that have been made in investigating my father’s death”, the statement said. “There is a lack of integrity and competence in the investigation that has taken place thus far.”

The body of Mr Singh, who was a British citizen and of Warrington Avenue, had been embalmed in India and repatriated home after his death on November 19 last year.

But his heart had been removed and examined in India, where medics concluded that he had died from chronic ischemic heart disease.

Ian Wade KC, the assistant coroner for Berkshire, said he felt the Indian medical report had “greater status” than the second-hand accounts of the witnesses cited by Mr Singh’s family.

“The story which emerged from India - perhaps losing something in translation or shrouded in a certain amount of mystery - tends to suggest he was set upon by four people”, Mr Wade said.

Mr Wade said that account was not borne out by a physical examination of Mr Singh’s body back in England, which found no injuries consistent with him being attacked.

“Whilst it is certainly possible and may even be likely in the eyes of some that he had died following the stress or excitement of a confrontation between himself and four younger and disputatious if not angry men, there does not deem to me to be any compelling evidence he was assaulted.

“He appears to have suffered a naturally caused heart attack on that day”, Mr Wade said, concluding Mr Singh died of natural causes.

But he added: “If it were to emerge that the evidence I have relied upon was not reliable and if it should emerge that the authorities in India have got reason to further pursue a criminal investigation, nothing I have said or done will have any impact on their decision.”