Mom hangs baby girl to death, kills herself

Coimbatore: A 26-year-old woman murdered her 15-month-old daughter by hanging her and committed suicide on Monday night in her house at Palakkarai near Negamam on the outskirts of the city after her husband refused to take her for a wedding function.

The Negamam police identified the deceased as K Thamarai Selvi, wife of Kathiravan, 28, of Palkara Thottam at Palakkarai, and her daughter Yasavi.

Police said Selvi was suffering from thyroid disorder and depressed over the same.

On Sunday evening, police said, the couple had attended a pre-wedding reception. On Monday morning, she asked her husband to take her for the wedding function. However, Kathiravan, a farmer, turned down her request, citing some other work, they said.

K G Sivakumar, deputy superintendent of police, Pollachi sub-division, said Selvi was angry with her husband for not taking her for the wedding function. “On Monday night, she called her mother and asked her to take care of her baby girl and hung up on her. Later, she switched the mobile phone off.”

Following this, Selvi’s younger brother K Giridharan rushed to Palakkarai to check on his sister. “As she did not open the door, he climbed on the house, removed the roof tiles and found his sister and her daughter hanging from a wooden angle at either ends of a sari,” the officer said.

Giridharan informed his family members and the Negamam police, who retrieved the dead bodies and sent them to the Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) for postmortem.

The deputy superintendent of police said there was no foul play behind the death of the mother-daughter duo. “She might have been strangulated the baby first and hung her using the sari, before hanging self at the other end of the sari.”

The Negamam police have registered a case under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The bodies were handed over to the family members after autopsy on Tuesday. Further investigation is on.


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