india

Updated: Oct 19, 2019 00:22 IST

Chennai: Four members of a family, including a woman and her two daughters, committed suicide near Auroville township in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district, police said on Friday.

Preliminary inquiries have indicated that the family killed themselves due to mounting debts, Villupuram police said.

The deceased have been identified as Sundaralingam (40), Maheswari (35), Krithika (17) and Sameeksha (13), residents of Kuyilapalayam village near Auroville.

“Sundaralingam was working in a bakery. His wife Maheswari worked as a maid at a hotel in Auroville. The couple’s kids studied in a school at Auroville. Maheswari did not go to work since Monday. Therefore, the hotel owner sent a few workers to contact Maheswari at her house on Thursday night. When the workers went to Maheswari’s house, they found the door locked inside,” said an inquiry officer with the Auroville police station.

When police broke open the door, they found Sundaralingam hanging and the bodies of his wife and daughters lying on a bed in a decaying state, police said. Maheswari and her two daughters consumed poison, police added.

“During the inquiry, we found that the couple had a debt of Rs 10 lakh. They had collected money for the Deepavali Chit Fund from their neighbours since last year. However, a week before Deepavali, all from the family killed themselves,” the police officer said.

The bodies have been sent to the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Kalapet for post-mortem examination