Agartala, April 1: Tripura Central University dean (Arts) Manjari Chowdhury committed suicide by hanging herself at her residence in the Shibnagar area here last night.

Manjari, 57, wife of the university’s vice-chan-cellor Arunoday Saha, had returned home from the institution in the evening and sent her domestic help to buy snacks around 7pm.

The domestic help returned within half an hour and found Manjari’s room door closed from within. Unnerved, the domestic help called for help from neighbours who informed the East Agartala police station and vice-chancellor Saha.

Later, police broke open the door and found Manjari hanging from a ceiling fan. After being taken to hospital, she was pronounced “brought dead” by the doctors.

Saha refused to comment on his wife’s suicide but police sources said that Manjari had left a suicide note attributing her decision to end life to “chronic sickness” without holding anyone responsible for it.

“The post-mortem is going to be conducted today and the body will be cremated after her son Rajarshi Saha returns home from the USA,” a source said.

According to information available from Manjari’s family members, she had been suffering from extreme depression since 1999 when her younger son Debarshi Saha had gone missing from Calcutta while heading for his engineering college at Warangal in Andhra Pradesh.

“She was under treatment of a psychiatrist for extreme depression but finally after a decade she has succumbed to the depression. There is no other explanation because she had quite a happy and peaceful family life,” Shishir Chowdhury, a retired schoolteacher and Manjari’s elder brother, said.