Tenants who left their property after a housemate died have won their case against the letting agent.

The student tenants found Robert Chavda, 21, dead in his bed.

With five months still to run on their tenancy, they claimed the ordeal left them traumatised and unable to move back into the five-bedroom home in Canterbury.

It was claimed that the students found their sharer dead in January, with rent paid up until the end of the following month. The empty property is said to have undergone renovation in February.

The agent, Werner Toogood of The Student Lettings Agency, had let the property out to five students.

Three of the four surviving tenants had offered to pay rent on the remaining three months of their tenancy, but this was declined.

The fourth tenant settled in full.

Toogood claimed he had offered the students the chance to sublet the room in the property, but they declined.

The dispute ended up at Medway Civil Court, with the parents who had acted as guarantors fighting the agent’s claim for rent plus interest.

The mother of one of the tenants successfully claimed that because the property underwent renovation, it had implied that the agent understood the property had been surrendered.

The judge agreed, saying that the letting agent had effectively repossessed the property.