Three daughters of a boy-obsessed man committed suicide in Haryana’s Fatehabad district on Saturday, and a day after, the guilt-ridden father drowned himself in Punjab’s Mansa district.
The children’s mother, who jumped with them into the Badopal Canal near here, was rescued and charged with murder and attempted suicide. Tired of daily torment by husband over her begetting three girls in a row, she had decided to end it all after the couple’s last tiff, after which she had moved to her maternal home in Fatehabad district.
On Saturday (March 9), Pooja, 31, mother of Riya,11, Siya, 9, and Priya, 6, pushed the children into the canal and jumped in after them. Some farmers working nearby, who dived into the water on spotting this, could save only Pooja. They called in the police, who fished Priya’s body from the canal and registered a case under Sections 302 (murder) and 309 (attempt to commit suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against her mother.
Out of the three children, Siya had polio. Quizzed after the rescue, Pooja said she had first thought of jumping alone into the water but then got worried about the fate of her daughters after her.
"Patriarchal mindset has created an atmosphere in which a woman’s identity is linked to her giving the family a heir,” sociologist Jatinder Parsad of Maharishi Dayanand University interpreted the case at Rohtak.