Pune: Couple kills children, commits suicide

PUNE: A young couple allegedly throttled their six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter before committing suicide by hanging themselves from a ceiling hook in their one-room kitchen rented house at Sukhsagarnagar in Bibvewadi. The incident came to light at around 11pm on Thursday.
“A note scribbled on a wall in the house and signed by Atul Dattatreya Shinde (33), and his wife, Jaya (32), stated that nobody be held responsible for the incident as they were ending their lives out of the frustration caused by their situation,” sub-inspector Mahendra Patil of the Bharati Vidyapeeth police told TOI on Friday.
Police identified the deceased minors as Rugved (6) and Antara (3).
Patil said, “Atul, a postgraduate in arts faculty, was running a business of printing identity cards for school children. However, his business ran into trouble ever since the lockdown was announced on March 24. This may have driven the couple to the drastic step. Jaya too was a graduate.”
He said, “On Thursday evening, one of the neighbours, also a friend of Atul’s brother, noticed that the ceiling fan in the house was on, but there was no movement around. He knocked the door, but there was no response. He then called Atul’s father, who stays in Padmavati, and the latter reached the spot to check the matter.”
“Together, they tried to draw some response from inside the house, but there wasn’t any movement. They called the police who broke open the house and found all the four members hanging from a ceiling hook.”
On Friday morning, the police were awaiting preliminary postmortem details to decide on the charges that can be applied in the case.