Mira Chowdhury on Saturday. (Pradip Sanyal)

Calcutta, July 5: A young woman apparently killed herself yesterday after realising that her husband had gulped down poison, unable to cope any more with the expensive treatment of his bone cancer.

Pintu Chowdhury and Tandra had got married only a year and a half ago.

His mother Mira said she had sensed tension between her son and daughter-in-law because they did not have enough money for the treatment. “I asked Tandra yesterday whether something was wrong, but she did not say much. I presumed things were better,” said Mira.

In their single-storey house, on the south-eastern fringes of the city, the elderly woman smelt something unusual when the couple did not step out of their room by late evening, several hours after they had gone inside for a siesta.

Mira alerted her neighbours. They peeped through the window and saw Pintu and his wife lying on the floor.

Personnel from Purba Ja-davpur police station broke open the door and brought the bodies out. Tandra had a noose around her neck, with the rope tied to a window grille.

Pintu, 30, a building material supplier, did not have a steady income. Tandra, 25, had got a housekeeper’s job in a private hospital on EM Bypass a month ago.

Pintu was diagnosed with cancer six months after marriage. He had been administered a few doses of chemotherapy. “Yesterday, he was to have another cycle at the Chittaranjan Cancer Institute. I would usually have to take him to hospital since Tandra had to go to office. Yesterday, Pintu told me he wouldn’t go as he was not feeling well,” the mother said.

Pintu’s chemotherapy cost around Rs 30,000 a month.

A neighbour, Kanchan Karmakar, said fights between the husband and wife over money had become frequent.

“The exact cause of the deaths can be ascertained after a post-mortem, but we don’t suspect foul play,” said D.P. Singh, an additional superintendent of police.

Pintu’s brother, sister-in-law and father were not at home when Mira raised the alarm last evening.

Tandra’s brother Sukhen Biswas had not heard of any “problems in their relationship”, though his sister “used to be depressed since the detection of her husband’s ailment”.

The young man came from Kalna in Midnapore after hearing about the death.