Newlywed British Couple on Their Honeymoon Died from a Drug Overdose in India

Loop1 · #1 ● 05-26-2019, 10:37 PM

On October 21st, 2014, a newlywed couple from Manchester, England were found dead at their hotel room close by to the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. The husband J.G., 27, and his wife A.G., 24, were discovered by staff at the Maya Hotel when they had not checked out that morning. Their bodies were on the hotel bed lifeless surrounded by empty cough syrup bottles and pills including Diazepam (Valium), Alprazolam (Xanax), Pregabalin (Lyrica), and Codeine.

Police believe the couple died by drug overdose the night before or in the early morning because their dinner from room service had been left untouched. No suicide note was left behind at the scene. A postmortem confirmed they were killed by “acute respiratory distress syndrome due to excessive overtake of either Diazepam or Codeine.”

The couple who were a month away from celebrating their first anniversary had already been traveling around India for the past three months as part of their honeymoon and had planned to continue their trip to Indonesia. While A.G.’s social media posts showed the couple were having the time of their lives, J.G. talked openly on his Twitter account about his excessive drug use in India.

J.G.’s last tweet posted October 19th said:

Codeine under the counter here.

With Valium, Xanax and Lyrica.

Wlinning.

Based on J.G.’s tweets about his excessive drug use, and in the absence of a suicide note, a case can be made that the drug overdose was accidental. Their family members however have speculated the couple killed themselves in a suicide pact after battling depression and seeing the poverty in India. One British tabloid has even speculated the deaths as a “Romeo and Juliet suicide pact.”

As reported by the Daily Mail:

Two British newlyweds who died from a suspected drugs overdose in India may have killed themselves in a Romeo and Juliet-style suicide pact, a relative said today.

The bodies of J.G. and A.G. were found on a hotel bed surrounded by sleeping pills, anti-depressants and empty bottles of cough syrup.

Police say the couple – both teachers with first-class degrees – died of an overdose in their locked room near the Taj Mahal.

A book called The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet, a travel bag, mobile phone and other holiday paraphernalia can also be seen on their double bed.

J.G.’s stepfather, G.P., said the couple may have taken their own lives in despair after being 'continually smacked in the face' by the country's shocking levels of poverty.

In the days before their deaths, he said A.G. told how her idealistic view of life in India had been shattered by the reality.

G.P. also described how her husband 'hated social injustice' and said he had been 'quite depressed' in the run-up to their travels.

Alluding to Romeo and Juliet, the architect told The Times: 'Something could have triggered J.G. into a bit of a despair and, you know, he does something daft and she follows.

'They’re both philosophical characters.

'They were incredibly close and although I would have said A.G. was inherently a much stronger personality and more balanced, I could conceive of a situation where, if J.G. could take his life, then A.G. could follow him.'

India is a popular destination for drugs tourists keen to acquire powerful prescription medicines from chemists, with few questions asked.

Although J.G. made no secret of his craving for pills, relatives of his wife insisted yesterday she was anti-drugs.

Rajesh Gupta, who owns the hotel which is a popular haunt for backpackers, said the couple checked in on Monday night.

He said: ‘Later they ordered the dinner at 9pm and by 10pm our room service went with dinner. He knocked on the door and J.G. opened the door and took the dinner – he didn’t allow our employee inside the room and closed the door.

‘They booked only for one night and were supposed to inform us about an extended stay.

‘When they didn’t come down, our hotel staff knocked their door at 11:30 am on Tuesday, but there was no response and door was locked inside. He informed the manager quickly who later informed the police.

‘Later police arrived and found that both were dead on the bed. Both the television and air conditioner were on.

‘Police found five empty bottles of cough syrup, strips of sleeping pills, anti-depressants and a medical prescription from the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, mentioning a drug called diazepam – used to treat anxiety disorders.’

Shalabh Mathur, who is a police chief in Agra, said: ‘From the prescription, it appears that the woman had some sort of headache.

‘A lot of anti-depressants, pain killers and other medicines were found in the room.

‘There were no apparent signs of any struggle or forced entry into the room. We have looked at all possible scenarios and it looks like a case of a drug overdose.’

Ish Anand, the Delhi doctor who prescribed J.G. the diazepam, said: ‘He said he’d been on the medicine for a long time and he had come to me for a repeat prescription.

'He was addicted to these pills so it’s not safe to come off them immediately, he has to come off them slowly. So I gave him a different dose as a repeat prescription.

‘You need to slowly reduce your intake, it is very serious if you stop taking them immediately, so I felt it reasonable to give him another prescription.

‘He seemed stable, calm, alert and walked well. It was a medicine that I just continued to give him; it wasn’t a new prescription.

'He was very well informed about the medicine and I felt he knew what he was doing.’

J.G.’s stepfather G.P. told the Mail that J.G. took drugs to treat depression.

‘This wasn’t two young people on a drug-fuelled trip around India,’ he insisted. ‘They went to there to experience the Indian way of life and the culture.

‘A.G. has always been very wary of drugs and drug culture. She just wasn’t interested.’

The 67-year-old architect added: ‘J.G. was a very intense young guy. He had really strong views about social injustice and there were a lot of things in the world he was unhappy about. He was like a student from the 60s.

‘It’s no secret that J.G. had bouts of depression. That maybe came from all the things that he had going around in his head. I know he had taken anti-depressants while out in India.’

G.P. said: ‘They had been planning the trip to India for some time and we were surprised when they decided to get married first. It seemed an old-fashioned idea.’

The couple both taught languages at Manchester International College and wanted to teach English abroad on an extended work-holiday that would take in Indonesia. ‘It wasn’t just a holiday, they planned to be away for some time,’ said G.P.

J.G.’s father P.G., who lives in Wilmslow, Cheshire, posted on Facebook: ‘I can’t understand how I should feel at the moment, my mind is blank. Just very sad.’

Family member D.G. said on Facebook – beneath a picture of J.G. as a schoolboy: ‘He was a cutie, and when I see him and A.G. at their wedding reception never in a million years would I have dreamed this would happen.

‘They were such a lovely couple who had their lives in front of them.’

A.G. was keen on photography and had studied the subject at Liverpool’s John Moores University. She gained a Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages to start working alongside her husband in Manchester. J.G. graduated in 2012.

The couple, who had been dating for five years before they married, went to India in early July.

Soon after arriving in India, J.G. was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs by a doctor and tweeted: ‘Chemically coshed. Not in a good way. Some Indian doctors are insane.’

The British media covered this story in great detail. You can find some of their articles below:

"Drug death bride 'tried to break husband's addiction': Family mourns couple in Taj Mahal hotel tragedy" in the Daily Mail
"Tributes to newlywed couple found dead in Indian hotel room" in the Manchester Evening News
"British couple found dead in India were 'friendly and courteous'" in The Telegraph

TL;DR: Newlywed British couple died from a drug overdose at a hotel near the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.

Loop1 · #2 ● 05-26-2019, 10:43 PM

There are a lot of high quality images of the crime scene at Shutterstock. However the images have watermarks on them so I am putting them in a separate post here.