Mumbai:
A 41-year-old man has left a note blaming his wife and her aunt before killing himself inside a hotel room in Mumbai. Nishant Tripathi died by suicide in his room at the Sahara Hotel last Friday after uploading his suicide note on the website of the company he worked for, said police.
He checked into the hotel three days earlier and had allegedly put up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign – used by guests for privacy – before hanging himself. On getting no response for a long time, the hotel staff used a master key to enter his room and alerted cops when they found him dead.
Cops said they have opened a probe and filed a case against Apoorva Parikh and her aunt Prarthana Mishra for abetment to suicide based on a complaint by the victim’s mother Neelam Chaturvedi, a women’s rights activist. No one has been arrested yet.
In the suicide note, which was secured with a password on his company’s website, he expressed his love for his wife and held her and her aunt responsible for his death.
“By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. In my last moments, I could’ve hated you for everything that happened. But I don’t. For this moment, I choose love. I loved you then. I love you now. And as I had promised, it’s not going to fade,” read his suicide note. “My mother knows among all the other struggles I faced, you and Prarthana Mausi are also responsible for my death. So I beg you don’t approach her now. She’s broken enough. Let her grieve in peace,” it added.
Ms Chaturvedi wrote a long post on Facebook grieving her son’s death. “Today I feel like a living corpse,” she said, adding that she devoted her life to women’s rights and gender equality.
“My life is over now. My son, Nishant left me. I have now become a living corpse. He had to perform my last rites but today on 2nd March, I have cremated my son at “ECO-MOKSHA” Mumbai. My daughter Prachi performed the last rites of her elder brother. Give me and my daughter Prachi courage so that I can bear such a big thunderbolt,” she said in her post.
The incident comes amid an uproar seeking gender neutral laws in the wake of suicide cases due to alleged harassment by wives’ family.
Four days before the Mumbai incident, a techie from Agra allegedly died by suicide, leaving a video blaming his wife. Manav Sharma was found hanging in his home on February 24 and his sister found the video in his phone two days later.
Sharma had recorded the seven-minute video with a noose around his neck, highlighting the need for a law that protects men. His wife, Nikita, had denied the charges in a counter video, and accused him of domestic violence in a drunken state.
The suicide of a Bengaluru-based techie Atul Subhash in December – and his charges against his wife and in-laws – had sparked a demand for gender-neutral laws to protect men from false cases.
Days later, a similar case of torture and intimidation was reported from Delhi in which a 40-year-old Delhi café owner ended his life after accusing his wife and in-laws of mental torture and unreasonable demands.
