Shanghai police yesterday cleared Marks & Spencer of any responsibility in a freak accident that caused a 24-year-old Indian man to fall to his death after losing his balance on an escalator.

After reviewing videotapes of the fall, the victim's wife said she did not intend to press any actions against the British retail giant, according to a family friend.

Harshit Shah, a trader from Mumbai who worked at the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, was shopping with his wife and a friend in the recently opened Marks & Spencer outlet on Nanjing Road W. on Sunday night when he fell four floors to his death.

Shah's wife was standing beside him on the escalator when he lost his balance and toppled off, according to a friend who identified himself only as Ketan.

"I watched the closed-circuit TV footage myself, and there is no doubt it was a freak accident," Ketan said. "Harshit tried to rest his hand on the escalator and lost his balance and fell over."

Shah moved to Shanghai in 2006 as the chief representative of an Indian trading company at the Shanghai Diamond Exchange. He lived in Shanghai with his wife, who was not identified.

Ketan said Shah was a member of the city's small Gujarati Jain community. Gujarat is a state in western India, and the Jains are a religious minority group. Shah will be cremated in Shanghai today in compliance with Jain religious practice. Shah's family arrived in the city from Mumbai yesterday.

"The police confirmed on Monday that Marks & Spencer is clear of responsibility in the accident," said Zhang Zhenyi, brand manager of the Shanghai outlet. "But we feel very sad about it."

Officials at the city's work safety administration said they did not conduct inspections at the store following the incident because there were no reports of any problems with the escalators, which had passed safety checks before the outlet opened last week.

But Xinhua news agency reported on Monday that an official at the Shanghai Public Security Bureau said that there was a "dangerous 2-meter gap between two adjacent escalators" in the store, and that authorities were investigating the accident.

A Jing'an District police official told Shanghai Daily it was "unlikely" that a public security bureau official would have commented on the incident.

"If the escalators were suspected of not meeting security standards, the work safety administration would have been asked to check the construction," said Zhang Yandong, media coordinator for Jing'an District police.

"It's the commission's duty to check whether a gap between escalators is dangerous - not the security bureau."

(Shanghai Daily October 8, 2008)