Shalimar Bagh: Man strangles his children, kills himself

A 45-year-old man allegedly strangled his two children to death at his north Delhi home on Sunday evening before killing himself by jumping in front of a running

A 45-year-old man allegedly strangled his two children to death at his north Delhi home on Sunday evening before killing himself by jumping in front of a running train at the Haiderpur Metro station, the police said.

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Vijayanta Arya, deputy commissioner of police (northwest), said that the man was possibly suffering from depression after his factory that manufactured sandpaper shut down about six months ago.

“No suicide note has been found so far, but it is possible that depression due to his financial issues led to the murders and suicide. We continue to probe the reason,” Arya said.

The murdered children were his 14-year-old daughter and six-year-old son. The DCP said that based on the initial probe, it appeared they were strangled and smothered, but the police would await the autopsy report.

The man’s wife is alive as she was at the market at the time of the murders, the officer said.

The man lived in a rented two-bedroom house in a middle-income neighbourhood in Shalimar Bagh. His relatives live in the nearby Model Town area. His wife is a homemaker while his children studied in the government school in the neighbourhood.

“About six months ago, the man’s factory had to shut down and he had been depressed since then. The family was short of money and managed to survive on the help provided by his relatives,” the officer said.

“His family has said that he had undergone treatment for mental health issues, but we are yet to see medical documents to confirm that,” the DCP said.

Around 3pm on Sunday, the man’s wife left home to visit a market. “We suspect that the man killed his children around that time, locked the house from outside and left,” the officer said.

Around 6.45pm, his wife returned home to find the house locked from the outside and opened the house using a spare key that was with the landlord.

“The two children were found dead in separate rooms in the house,” the officer said. A call to the police was made at 6.54pm by the house owner.

“But even before the murders came to light, at Haiderpur Metro station nearby, the man had jumped from platform number one before a running train. This happened at 5.47pm,” another police officer said. No suicide note was found.

The police are in the process of registering a case of murder and are waiting for the man’s wife to recover enough to be able to talk to them—they need to know if what they have unearthed is mere conjecture and if there is more to the incident.

In 2018, nearly seven persons killed themselves every day on an average, shows data released by the National Crime Records Bureau. In fact, with 2,526 such cases in Delhi in 2018, there were more deaths by suicide than road accidents which left 1,690 people dead—a trend consistent over the years.

At least 98 of these persons killed themselves due to unemployment and 30 more due to poverty.

Rajat Mitra, a clinical psychologist, believes that the financial status of a person can’t be directly linked to suicide, but many people end up killing themselves when they feel that they can’t get rid of poverty despite trying.

Illnesses—prolonged, terminal or mental—caused 218 persons to commit suicide in 2018 and constituted 13% of all identified motives.

Help is just a call away. A few major suicide prevention helpline numbers in India are Sneha India Foundation +9111-65978181, Sumaitri +9111-23389090, and ‘Roshni’ (a Hyderabad-based helpline) +914066202000.