The house of Sudhakar Jha in Patna, where his wife Ritu committed suicide on Monday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, March 28: Rishu, Kajal and Chotu will never see their mothers ever again.

Four-year-old Rishu was munching on chips outside his Azad Nagar Road number-1 Colony residence under Kankerbagh police station unaware that his mother, Ritu Devi (24), had hung herself to death this afternoon.

Kajal (10) and Chotu (6) had a different story. The siblings were among the four children of 37-year-old Kusum Devi and her husband, Manoj Sharma, a police constable posted in Patna.

The couple had a quarrel over the phone last night following which Kusum laced sweets with sulphas and served them to her four children. Then, she consumed the sweets herself.

While Kusum and her eldest son, Yuvraj (12), died while being taken to Patna from Islampur in Nalanda district, where she stayed alone with her children, Choti (6) died at the city-based Magadh Hospital this morning.

Kajal and Chotu are fighting for their lives.

The back-to-back incidents have come as a shock for many, including the police.

Ritu’s husband, Sudhakar Jha, works as an assistant station manager in Punpun area of Patna, while she used to stay with her in-laws in their rented four-room house. She was married to him since five years now.

The police recovered four suicide notes from Ritu’s room — one addressed to Rishu, another to her father, the third to her husband and the last, a general note in which she held no one responsible for her death.

“The letters were in a drawer in the room where she hanged herself. She hanged herself around 12 noon. Her in-laws were in other rooms. She must have quietly locked up the door to take the drastic step,” an officer at the Kankerbagh police station said.

“In the letter to Sudhakar, she asked him to forget her. The letter to her father expressed her wish that her ornaments be used to fund Rishu’s education. In the letter to her child, Ritu expressed her love for her sweet son. The case seems to be a suicide but the post-mortem report is awaited,” the officer added.

Sudhakar was on his way back home while the other family members kept mum.

Manoj, Kusum’s husband, told The Telegraph over the phone: “I am posted in Patna and my family lives in Rana Pratap Nagar in Islampur in Nalanda. There had been no fights and I used to call up and talk to my wife everyday. I was there during Holi and had bought many things for them. I am destroyed now.”

He is posted at the Police Lines in Patna and is a bodyguard to one Sanjeev Singh, a Patna based contractor.

Police officers at Islampur police station said the incident took place around 9pm after which all of them were brought to Islampur primary health centre.

“Their condition is very critical. Yuvraj died immediately. The others were rushed to Magadh Hospital in Patna, 90km from Nalanda,” an officer said.

“Kajal and Chotu are still vomiting and are in a critical condition. Sulphas is a deadly poison, the effects of which linger for long,” S.N.H. Kazimi, the administrator of Magadh Hospital, said.