A 42-year-old woman hanged herself at her Refugee Colony house on Punjabi Lane, Jamshedpur, late on Sunday night, apparently upset over the worsening financial condition of the family and failing business of her husband. No suicide note was found.
Police said Meera Devi Agrawal, wife of Narayan Agrawal who trades in milk products, used a sari to prepare the noose and hanged from the ceiling fan of her bedroom around 11pm. There was no one at the rented house at the time of the incident.
While Narayan was busy working, their two sons - one 19-year-old who studies engineering at a college in Bhubaneswar and the other 17-year-old who is in Class XII at a Pune-based school - were out of station.
According to Narayan, he was trying to reach his wife on phone as he had got late on Sunday night. After repeated attempts between 10.30pm and 11.15pm, when Narayan did not get any response from Meera, he rushed home.
"The door was locked from inside but she was not responding. I broke open the door to find her hanging from the ceiling fan," he said.
Narayan immediately brought the body down and rushed her to MGM Medical College and Hospital, where she was declared brought dead.
Asked about the reason, he said: "She had been very anxious about my financial condition as our business was not in a good shape. However, I could never imagine that she would take such a drastic step."
A relative of the Agrawals said Narayan, who used to supply food products to different shops across the city, had been incurring heavy losses for the past two years. "Narayan has taken loans from banks as well as private money lenders. But, as the business continued to fall, Meera went into depression," he said.
Golmuri OC Satyendra Kumar Singh said this was a case of suicide. "The deceased has left no suicidal note as such, but from the statement made from the husband and others, it is assumed that a bad financial condition of the Agrawal family had led the woman to commit suicide. We have sent the body to the MGM Medical College mortuary for post-mortem," said the officer-in-charge.
