The deal had been fixed at Rs 3.5 lakh and the family had reportedly paid the agent Rs 2.17 lakh four months ago. However, when he failed to live up to his promise, they started demanding their money back.

Sixty-five-year-old Mukhtiar and his son Tarsem (43) had both retired as havaldars from the defence forces. While Tarsem had served in the Army, his father had served in the Border Security Force (BSF). They lived in Kirti Nagar.

Shakeel Ahmed, a parking lot attendant at the Mohan Dev Building in Connaught Place where the incident took place, says: ``The father-son duo came here at around 3 p.m. I saw them talking angrily and the elderly Sardarji said whatever happened, he would take his money back today. His son, who was walking, just nodded. After that they turned around the corner and went towards the travel agency -- Trip Travel.'' It was apparently outside the agency that Mukhtiar and Tarsem saw Pada and they all started arguing. No one paid much attention, till they came to blows.

``Suddenly, we saw these people slapping and punching each other. Initially there were two people on both sides and then two more came and joined them. They were beating that elderly man as well as his son. However, when people intervened, they let go of him but continued beating his son,'' said Jaswant Singh.

The tired old man, went towards the pavement and lay down quietly. Everyone thought he was taking a breather and were busy pacifying Tarsem, Pada and the travel agency owners, Ashish and Nitin Mahajan, and the owners' father Shashi, that no one paid attention to the old man.

``The travel agency people were so angry that they refused to let go of Tarsem. Somehow, we managed to free him from their hold after which he ran and hid somewhere nearby. It was only then that someone yelled and asked us to come and take a look at the old man. We tried to revive him, but it was too late,'' said Jaswant.

By that time, the police also reached the spot and tried to make sense of the madness. Pushing their way through the crowd of office-goers, drivers, security guards and petty shopkeepers, they reached the dead man. Seeing the police, Tarsem also came out of hiding. Soon a CATS ambulance reached the spot and took Mukhtiar to RML Hospital and Pada and Ashish to the police station.

Rishi Dev, additional SHO (Connaught Place) said: ``There were no external injuries to either Mukhtiar or Tarsem. The CATS ambulance medical team said that he had died of heart failure.''

Dev said Tarsem had told them that Pada had assured them that he would arrange for a visa as well as a job for Jasbeer Singh in London. Jasbeer was a graduate and was keen to go abroad. Dev said they had registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and were investigating whether Pada had made more such deals.

However, employees of the Trip Travel agency refused to talk. All that they offered by way of explanation was that the fight took outside their office and they had nothing to do with it.