Jobless due to lockdown, man murders 3 children, hangs self

Jobless due to lockdown, man murders 3 children, hangs self

A.Selvaraj@timesgroup.com

Chennai:  19.05.2020

A 37-year-old jobless man murdered his three children and hanged himself from a tree branch at a village near Sriperumbudur on Monday, police said.

Arumugam, already at home, couldn’t land employment during the Covidsparked lockdown, while his wife Gomathi Ammal restarted her job on Monday after more than 50 days, a police officer said. He had strangled his elder daughter Rajeswari (12), and drowned Shalini (10), and Sethuraman (8), after tying their hands and feet, the officer said.

Around 5pm, the officer said, his wife Gomathi Ammal

(32) returned home in Vadamangalam village and found her husband and children missing. She found her elder daughter Rajeshwari lying dead in a pool of blood, a bedsheet wrapped around her. Her screams brought some of their neighbours to the spot.

A thorough search later, they found Arumugam hanging from the branch of a tree on a farm 300m from his house. A short distance away, the search party found on the banks of a well a shirt that Gomathi Ammal identified as belonging to her son Sethuraman. A few villagers jumped in and brought out the boy’s body and that of his sister Shalini. Their limbs were bound.

The bodies were sent to the government hospital in Sriperumbudur for autopsy.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Arumugam had been fighting frequently with Gomathi Ammal over the past week after she chided him for not looking hard enough for a job. She had herself resumed work as a house-keeping staffer at a private company on Monday.

Police registered a case of murder against Arumugam and closed the file. Further investigations are on.

Arumugam, already at home, couldn’t land employment during the Covid-sparked lockdown, while his wife Gomathi Ammal restarted her job on Monday after more than 50 days, a police officer said. He strangled his elder daughter Rajeswari (12), and drowned Shalini (10), and Sethuraman (8), after tying their hands and feet, the officer said