A 25-year-old woman killed her two children before attempting suicide thrice in Tamil Nadu’s Kallakurichi district. She survived and was booked on murder charges, police said.
On January 15, after a fight with her husband, the woman left her marital home with her children aged 3 and 2, and went to her grandmother’s house in the district. Her mother is working in Coimbatore and her father is no more, police said. “She wanted to die by suicide, so she jumped into a well along with her children,” a police officer said. “The children drowned but since the woman knew swimming, she survived. She then went to a nearby lake and jumped into it but she survived again. The third time, she climbed onto a high-tension electric wire and she fell down injured and unconscious.”
The woman is undergoing treatment at a government hospital in Kallakurichi. She has been booked under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), police said. “First, we will be taking a government-appointed counsellor to the hospital to ascertain her state of mind,” said Samay Singh Meena, superintendent of police (SP), Kallakurichi. “We have to enquire if she was abused. Her husband will also be brought in to be questioned.”
The couple hail from a backward community in Thyagadurgam village in Kallakurichi, and are daily-wage workers.
Police said that a fight happened between the husband and wife after the former had asked her to boil water. When she didn’t pay heed, her husband asked her to leave.