india

Updated: Dec 04, 2019 08:28 IST

Businessman Gulshan Vasudeva, who allegedly murdered his son and daughter before jumping from the eighth-floor balcony of his rented flat in Ghaziabad’s Indirapuram with his wife and a woman employee on Tuesday morning, had video-called his friend, Ramesh Arora moments before taking the extreme step.

Arora, 70, a resident of Jhilmil, recalled how he was surprised at having received a text from him at 3.30am.

“He sent a text reading ‘Jai Mata Di’ around 3.30am on Tuesday. Though, he usually sent such texts, I felt something was wrong. I tried calling him but he did not respond even though he was online on social media. Later, he made a video call around 3.38am, which lasted for four minutes. He showed me his two dead children. He told me that he distributed blankets, food and sweets to security guards on Monday night,” Arora, said.

“He said he was upset as officials of a Kolkata-based firm he was dealing with had fled with around Rs 80-90 lakh of his money. He showed me pictures of the suicide note he had written on the wall and the noose he had prepared. After the video call at 3.38am, I frantically tried to call him but he had switched off his phone. Then I tried calling up others,” he said.

Vasudeva had also told another childhood friend, Praveen Bakshi,around 18 months ago, that he was “feeling helpless” about the losses he had been suffering and how he might kill his family and himself.

Vasudeva — who ran a garments business in east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar— had been facing losses for the past 4-5 years, his childhood Bakshi recalled on Tuesday morning.

“He came to my office one day 18 months ago and told me all doors seemed to be slowly closing for him. He said he would kill his family members and himself if his situation did not improve. I consoled him then,” Bakshi said.

He said Vasudeva had purchased a car on EMI but had defaulted on his last four instalments.

“Since I was the guarantor, I got two notices — once in the first week of November and again in the last week of the same month. I tried calling him up several times after that but his phone was switched off,” Bakshi said.

Generally, in the garments business in Gandhi Nagar, influential middlemen arrange transactions. “But Vasudeva was dealing with a Kolkata-based firm on his own. On Monday evening, he was supposed to fly to Kolkata at 11pm and meet them. However, before that he received a message that officials of the Kolkata firm had fled with the money. This made him very upset. He already was upset for not being able to recover Rs 2 crore he had lent to his brother-in-lawRakesh Verma,” he said. A case was lodged against Verma at Sahibabad police station in Ghaziabad in 2015.

Sudhir Kumar Singh, senior superintendent of police, said they were trying to trace the family of Vasudeva’s employee Sanjana, who was from Seelampur in Delhi but had been staying with the family for past four years.

“Sanjana survived the jump from the 8th floor. She told us they had killed themselves on their own. She later succumbed to injuries. Vasudeva left a bounced cheque on the wall where the suicide note was written. This was given to him by his brother-in-law Rakesh Verma,” Singh said.