Woman, daughter go with suicide pact; husband kills himself in grief

Indrajeet Dutta, Dr Jasmine Patel and daughter Oshin

A family of three - a woman, her husband and their daughter - from Kamothe, Navi Mumbai, committed suicide over the weekend. The reason for the mass suicide is not known, but sources said the family was going through a rough financial patch.

Also read: 5 members of a family commit suicide near Hyderabad

The woman, Dr Jasmine Patel (45) and the daughter, Oshin (15), allegedly killed themselves first, leaving behind a suicide note dated April 20. On finding them dead after returning home, the grief-stricken husband, engineer Indrajeet Dutta (50), too, hanged himself to death, after writing a suicide note on April 22.

The bodies were discovered by the family's domestic help when she returned yesterday after a two-day leave. "The keys were left hung on the house door in a plastic bag," said Ashok Naik, senior inspector of Kamothe police station.

The building in Kamothe, Navi Mumbai, where they resided

Blames illness
In her suicide note, Dr Patel, who ran a clinic in Kamothe, said she was taking her life owing to a protracted illness. "She said she didn't want to leave her daughter behind, and so had made a suicide pact. She expressed her wish to donate both bodies to KEM Hospital for research," said Hemant Nagrale, Commissioner of Police, Navi Mumbai.

Also read - Thane: Debt-ridden man and family attempt suicide

The husband's suicide note stated that he had no will to live after his wife and daughter's deaths, and that he was taking his life.

While Baba Bhudwant, assistant commissioner of police who visited the spot, said the handwriting of the deceased would be verified, another police official ruled out the possibility of murder.

Kid's diary entry
The police also recovered Oshin's diary from the flat in Indravihar Residency at Sector 36 in Kamothe.

An entry, which runs into several pages, has caught the authorities' attention. In it, the young girl claimed that she was forced to drop out of school after Std IX, and that her parents had nasty drunken arguments over finances. She said her excessive weight forced her to use a wooden staff and she blamed her parents for "the mess" in her life.

Financial crunch
A police official believed that a financial crisis could have pushed the family over the edge. Radheshyam Pal, the security guard of the building, backed this theory, saying he hadn't seen Dr Patel go to her clinic or the daughter get out of the house in the last five months. The flat owner, however, he received his rent payments of Rs 12,000 a month on time.

Postmortem examinations of the bodies were performed at Panvel Municipal Hospital. The bodies are kept at Vashi Municipal Hospital's mortuary as the police are yet to trace's the family's relatives.