Elderly Woman Hangs Self; Son and His Wife Booked as 'Suicide Note' Accuses Them of Harassment

A 61-year-old woman allegedly hanged herself to death at her residence in Maharashtra’s Thane city with her purported suicide note mentioning mental harassment by daughter-in-law and son as the reason behind her extreme step, police said.

The woman ended her life on March 2, following which the police registered a case of abetment to suicide against her daughter-in-law and son, they said.

The complaint in this connection was lodged by the victim’s daughter, according to the police.”The victim, identified as Sushma Vilas Khairnar, left a 12-page suicide note that the police recovered from her residence, where she lived with her son Rahul and daughter-in-law Gauri,” senior inspector of Naupada police station Abhay Mahajan said.

The accused duo got married in 2014 and the victim resided with them, he said.”As per her note and the complaint, the relationship between the accused and the woman was strained. Her daughter-in-law and son had barred the woman from moving freely in the house, among other things. One day, the couple even asked her to leave the house and start living in a senior citizen’s home,” he said.

The woman used to tell her ordeal to her daughter who lived somewhere else. On Mach 2, she again called her and urged her to rescue her from the couple’s clutches, saying she faced threat to life. Her daughter assured that she would meet her the next day. However, the victim hanged herself from the ceiling soon after that, the police said.

The woman was later taken to a hospital, where the doctors declared her dead, the police said. The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 306 (abetment to suicide), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention), they added.

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