Akul Dhawan, an Indian student, passed away after succumbing to freezing temperatures near a club in the United States that had denied him entry. The Champaign County Coroner’s Office in Illinois stated this week that Mr. Dhawan, who was discovered deceased last month, had died due to hypothermia aggravated by “acute alcohol intoxication and prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures, which significantly contributed to his demise.”
Reports indicate that on January 20, Mr. Dhawan went out with friends for drinks to a club near the university campus in Urbana, located in the state of Illinois. However, club staff refused him entry.
Subsequently, he disappeared, and despite numerous attempted calls that went unanswered, his friend eventually reached out to campus police. The following morning, a university staff member alerted authorities about “a man on the back porch of a building.” Police confirmed that he was “deceased upon discovery.”
Authorities stated that the information gathered thus far aligns with the initial assessment that Mr. Dhawan’s passing was accidental, with no indications of foul play.
Informing that Akul Dhawan was a freher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he was pursuining robotics at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In an open letter, Dhawan’s parents, who live in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, criticized the police, alleging negligence in their search efforts for their son that night. According to Dhawan’s family, if the authorities had located him, his life might have been spared.
Furthermore, his family described Dhawan as a promising young man with his entire future ahead of him.
