EVENTS leading up to the death of a Vale man in India 17 months ago may never be known, said Worcestershire coroner Victor Round.

The coroner adjourned James Downing's inquest after receiving last minute information from the British Deputy High Commission in India.

The 25-year-old television engineer from Bishampton died in a Bombay hospital on January 14 last year after arriving in the country with friends to celebrate the new millennium.

Ever since James's death, Worcestershire coroner Victor Round has been attempting to piece together the details.

He finally resumed the inquest last Friday despite being dissatisfied with the scant evidence, only to adjourn it again after receiving a police investigation report the day before which needed to be translated.

Mr Round said: "A case like this is fraught with difficulties. I may never be really satisfied we will know exactly what happened." He said there was a slight chance the new report might shed light on the mystery of how Mr Downing came to be found lying unconscious in a street in Goa. Before Mr Round adjourned the inquest, however, he heard evidence from the young man's friends and his mother, Christine Downing.

In a statement read out in court John Rigby, from Kempsey, said he flew out with James, his brother Guy and a group of other friends on December 23 for a month-long holiday.

He said on the second or third day Guy took a tablet and became ill and he was taken to hospital. James was worried about him and while visiting his brother in hospital in Goa obtained sleeping tablets for himself.

He took them and as a result missed the New Year celebrations because he was asleep.

Later the next day when he awoke he went out alone and was not seen for the next 27 hours. While Guy was in hospital James was brought in unconscious, minus his shoes and watch, after being found by an Israeli. There was no sign of any injury. What followed afterwards was described as a "nightmare" by James' mother.

She and her former husband, Mel, flew out to be with their sons as soon as they heard the news. Finally James was taken to a specialist hospital in Bombay.

Mrs Downing stayed with James during the day in Lilavati Hospital, Bombay, until his death after developing bronchial pneumonia and suffering a heart attack on January 14.

She was interviewed at the police station for five hours afterwards and was obliged to sign a statement believed to be in Hindi which she could not understand. Mrs Downing was next forced to arrange a post mortem, conveying her son's body herself in a car without a coffin, and bringing him back again to her hotel before he was taken away to be embalmed. She said: "The pathologist had to be bought to do the job for about £250 and it was very quick.

"It was late at night and I had to get him back in a car with no covering - as you can imagine this was a nightmare chain of events."

Mr Round ordered another post mortem when James' body was flown back home, however, it proved inconclusive.

He said James' brain had been extensively dissected, and the attempts to test for substances in his blood proved futile because of the amount of time he spent unconscious in hospital and the use of embalming fluid.

Mr Round said: "We cannot be sure that his initial condition was not due to drugs."

He said his friends' statements had been inconsistent, but he believed not intentionally so.

He added: "I do not know how much they had had to drink or what they had taken."

He adjourned the inquest to a date to be fixed.