A 71-year-old man from Britain has died after being electrocuted while on holiday in India, his family believe.
Residents in Norwich expressed their sadness and disbelief on Monday as they learned of the death of Ivan Brown, a “dearly loved” former pub landlord in the city.
Brown, who ran several pubs in the city, was six weeks into an eight-week trip with a friend, when he touched what appears to have been a live wire in the town of Dalhousie.
“He was very into photography and he was taking a photo of the Himalayas and as he stepped backwards we think he fell, he grabbed a live wire beside him which shouldn’t have been live,” his daughter Natalie Brown told the BBC.
“We’ve had information from police and the embassy of a few incidents at this place.”
Police in the state of Himachal Pradesh are investigating why the wire was live, the family have been told.
The Foreign Office said it was “supporting the family of a British man who has died in India and are in contact with the local authorities”.
Brown, a father of three, had been landlord of several Norwich pubs, including The Murderers, The Jubilee and The Eagle, becoming friends with his travelling companion David Linder when he sold him the latter establishment.
He and Mr Linder had been sending photos and stories back home to family and friends showing the “fantastic time” they had been having, with travelling a “huge passion” of his, Ms Brown said.
His death would leave “a massive hole in everyone’s life”, she said, saying that Brown’s wife Jackie, and her siblings Doug and Danielle, had received hundreds of visits, phone calls and messages from the local community and around the world.
“He was loved by everyone. He’s left a massive hole in everyone’s life – we haven’t stopped having people come around,” Ms Brown said.
“He was a very well-known character around Norwich and loved by many.
“He helped many people in so many ways. It’s a great loss to the whole of Norwich and as a family we are all distraught and devastated. And this should never have happened; he should be coming home to us. We loved him dearly”.
Tributes were paid on Facebook, with the administrator of a page dedicated to lost Norwich pubs describing him as “such a lovely person and great landlord” who “will be missed very much”.
Members of the page described him as “a great man gone far too early” who “truly was a major part of Norwich pub life” and “will be sorely missed by colleagues and customers alike”.
A former employee at the Bull and the Eagle described him as “a lovely man and a real gentleman”, while another described him as “a man whom I held great respect for, a great boss back in the day”.
