Tamil Nadu man kills three children, ends life

CHENNAI: A 37-year-old man without a job 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 lockdown, while his wife Gomathi Ammal, a housekeeping employee rendered wageless by the pandemic-induced lockdown, resumed her job on Monday after more than 50 days, a police officer said.
Arumugam strangled his elder daughter Rajeswari, 12, and drowned Shalini, 10, and Sethuraman, 8, after tying their hands and feet, the officer said, based on inquiries with the man’s wife and other villagers. Preliminary inquiries 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. Around 5pm, the officer said, Gomathi Ammal, 32, returned to her home in Vadamangalam and found Arumugam and their kids missing. She found her elder daughter Rajeswari lying dead in a pool of blood, a bed-sheet wrapped around her. Her screams brought some of their neighbours to her side.
A thorough search later, they found Arumugam hanging from the branch of a tree on a farm 300 metres from his house. A short distance away, near a well, the search party found a shirt that Gomathi identified as belonging to her son Sethuraman. Some villagers jumped in and brought out the boy’s body and that of his sister Shalini. Their limbs were tied up.
A police team led by Sriperumbudur inspector J Vinayagam rushed to the place and sent the three bodies to the government hospital in Sriperumbudur for autopsy.
Police registered a case of murder against Arumugam and closed the file. Further investigations are on.