CHENNAI: Two brothers committed suicide in Kancheepuram on Monday night.
Police said Vinoth, 23, and Sathish Kumar, 24, were residents of Chettiarpettai in Kancheepuram. While Vinoth ran a repair workshop, Sathish was into casual repair work. Ever since the lockdown, the brothers, both married, had little work and stayed indoors.
Police said there were regular arguments at home as the two struggled to meet the daily expenses. The two had stopped speaking to their neighbours and were depressed, said an investigating officer.
For the past two months they did not allow relatives to visit them and refused to let their wives venture out. The two abused their wives and did not let them use a phone. "Whenever someone called, they grabbed the phone and disconnected the line," said an investigating officer.
On Monday night, Vinoth's wife Suganya was feeding her child when she found that the brothers had locked themselves up in a room. When they did not respond to knocks on the door, she grew suspicious and peeped through the window and found them hanging from a ceiling fan.
She alerted neighbours who called the Kanchi taluk police.
Police registered a case of suicide and sent the bodies for postmortem to Kancheepuram government hospital. An investigating officer said the two hanged themselves using saris from the same fan. They did not leave behind any suicide note.
(Assistance for those with mental health issues is available on Tamil Nadu's health helpline 104 and Sneha's suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050).