30-yr-old woman dies by suicide after husband, 2 sons killed in Junagadh collapse

The woman, who died by suicide, had asked her husband and two children to wait for her while she went to buy vegetables. The three were killed when a building collapsed on them

Updated on: Jul 26, 2023, 21:30:30 IST

By Maulik Pathak

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AHMEDABAD: A 30-year-old woman who lost her husband and two young children in the Junagadh building collapse died by suicide, police said on Wednesday.

Local residents trying to rescue people trapped under the debris after a two-storey building collapsed in Junagadh

Her husband, an autorickshaw driver, and their two sons aged 13 and 7, were waiting for her in their autorickshaw while she was shopping for vegetables when the dilapidated two-storey building in Kadiyavad area of Junagadh collapsed on them on Monday.

“After the final rites of her husband and two children, the grief-stricken woman locked herself in the bathroom of her house and consumed acid on Tuesday evening. She was moved to a hospital for treatment, but she did not survive,” said SN Masida, a police officer at Junagadh A division police station.

Her brother-in-law informed the police about the suicide on Wednesday morning, the police official said.

Junagadh mayor Gitaben Parmar said the building was in a dilapidated condition and had been uninhabited.

“There was an autorickshaw driver with his two children beneath the building when it collapsed. They were waiting for the mother to return, who had gone to buy vegetables. Sadly, the father and his two children were killed. Also, there was a tea stall beneath the building whose owner also got killed in the crash,” said Parmar

The building collapse came two days after the city was inundated in a flash flood

The mayor revealed that municipal authorities issued notices to at least 38 residential societies in Junagadh requiring occupants to shift out on account of the building’s condition.

Apart from the four deaths in the building collapse, Parmar said three people died over the past few days in Junagadh city due to the rains.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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