After seeking police help, woman kills kids, self

Prolonged harassment, allegedly at the hands of her husband and in-laws, is suspected to have driven a 27-year-old woman to kill her two children before committing suicide in the city’s Mehrauli area on Friday.

Prolonged harassment, allegedly at the hands of her husband and in-laws, is suspected to have driven a 27-year-old woman to kill her two children before committing suicide in the city’s Mehrauli area on Friday.

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Around 2.30pm, Vinita Katara had visited the police station, barely half a kilometre from her Deluxe Apartment home, to lodge a complaint against her husband and his family.

Almost an hour and a nervous call from her relatives later, the police broke open the door of Katara’s modest, second floor home to find her and the two children dead.

“Vinita was hanging from the ceiling fan, next to her five-year-old daughter, who was also found hanging. Her 18-month-old son appears to have been strangulated. The post-mortem is yet to be conducted,” said Chhaya Sharma, DCP (south).

Police said while Katara’s torture complaint names her husband and the in-laws, the reason for the alleged harassment isn’t mentioned. Katara, while going home from the police station, was talking to her father Krishna Hari on the phone.

“Her father says she abruptly disconnected after telling him she couldn’t take things as they were anymore and switched off the phone. The father got worried and called up the Mehrauli police station after hunting down the number on the internet,” said a senior police officer.

According to Bhagirath, a security guard below her residence, Katara handed the house keys and the ‘receiving slip’ of her police complaint to an ice-cream vendor and asked him to give these to her husband.

“We have detained her husband Deepak, a nursing attendant at AIIMS, and registered a case of murder and dowry death,” Sharma said.