Dharma Patil was fighting to get adequate compensation

Even as the state chief secretary has been asked to probe the entire episode that culminated in the tragic death of a Dhule farmer, Dharma Patil, the police are trying to find if he was administered a dose of poison, possibly a heavy metal, before he came to Mantralaya on January 22. Sources said security personnel suspect that the octogenarian did not consume a chemical substance at Mantralaya, where he had come to meet ministers, but he could have been given it unknowingly through tea or coffee. The chemical analysis of the substance consumed hasn't yet come, but the security personnel on duty recall that the victim did not froth at the mouth, as usually happens when one consumes a pesticide or a similar poison. The officials are verifying CCTV footage of the victim's movement, and the behaviour of the people who accompanied him that day.