14-year-old dies by suicide at shelter home

The boy’s mother works as a cleaning lady and lives on the footpath near the LIC headquarter at Nariman Point

Mumbai: A 14-year-old boy who was living at the Don Bosco Shelter Home at Wadala died by suicide on the premises on Monday evening. The teenager hanged himself in the bathroom after being allegedly scolded by the monitor for not cleaning up the place properly. The Matunga police has since registered an accidental death report (ADR).

The boy himself was a student of class IXth at the D B Kulkarni School, Naigaon Cross Road, and lived at the shelter home (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The boy’s mother works as a cleaning lady and lives on the footpath near the LIC headquarter at Nariman Point. The boy himself was a student of class IXth at the D B Kulkarni School, Naigaon Cross Road, and lived at the shelter home.

A police officer attached to Matunga police station said the matter came to light when one of the inmates of the shelter home wanted to use the toilet but was unable to open it as it was locked from inside. After several minutes had elapsed and the toilet remained locked, the other boys climbed on the roof and then lowered one of them to look into the toilet through the iron grille. “When they broke open the door, they found him hanging on a scout’s rope,” said the officer. He was taken to Sion Hospital where he was declared ‘brought dead’.

After the police informed the boy’s mother of his death, his other kinsmen from the Pardhi tribe came to collect the body. One of the boy’s uncle complained the family had been informed only on Tuesday morning even though he had died on Monday evening. Santosh Pawar, Mumbai chief of Adivasi Pardhi Mahasangh who met the boy’s family, lamented the death of the teenager saying he was a keen student. “People in our community are often not interested in studies. We have been tagged as criminals and such incidents will only serve to pull the community away from education. The boy could have become a support to his mother as he would have cleared his SSC next year. The poor woman had lost her husband ten years ago, and she had been hoping that her son would grow up and support her, but now he too is gone,” said Pawar.

BOX on SUICIDE HELPLINE NUMBERS