AGRA: With no work, no money and no family to fall back on, Aldrin Lyngdoh killed himself. In his early 20s, Aldrin had moved to Agra from Shillong in search for a better life. But the Covid-19 lockdown caught him, like many others, off guard and the owner of the sweet shop he worked at, state minister Chaudhary Udaybhan Singh ’s daughter-in-law, asked him to fend for himself. On Monday night, he sent out a distress signal, a suicide note, to Delhi ADGP Robin Hibu . On Tuesday morning, he was found hanging in the shop’s storeroom.The lockdown had "closed all way 4me nowhere 2go were i ll go … plz help me i don’t know we’re 2go only 1way i see suicide (sic)," he wrote in his suicide note, which Hibu got at midnight. Aldrin added, in Khasi, "Please help me, my Khasi brothers and sisters. Please help me by sharing this with everyone in Shillong."Hibu — founder of Helping Hands , an NGO which helps residents from the northeast in distress — sent it to Meghalaya Police right away. They tried calling him but he wouldn’t answer. The note was shared with residents in Shillong, who spread the word on social media and tried to locate his family. Around 6.30am on Tuesday, Meghalaya Police shared the text with their counterparts in Agra. But by the time Agra Police reached the shop he worked at, Shanti Sweets & Restaurant at Shastripuram, he was dead."The shop was locked. We called the owner, Seema Chaudhary, and asked her to open it. Aldrin was found hanging by the neck in the first-floor storeroom," said Saurabh Dixit, investigating officer in the case. Seema, whom Aldrin held responsible for his suicide in the note, said Aldrin had "trespassed" on her property. "She said they had shut shop because of the coronavirus scare and that Aldrin had been fired since he had been suffering from tuberculosis, which he got when he was in jail for theft," Dixit, circle officer of Hariparvat, said.Police records bear part of this out — in 2018, Aldrin had been arrested for theft in Sikandra. He went by the name of Dev Thapa at the time. In his note, however, Aldrin had written he "was a thief from Shillong" but moved to Agra to "change (his) life".Chaudhary Udaybhan Singh’s media representative Manish Thapar took an accusatory tone and said Aldrin had lost his job "because" he had tuberculosis. "He was not taking proper medication even after Udaybhanji intervened and sent him to SN Medical College for treatment."The minister, however, dissociated himself from the case. "The shop is run by my daughter-in-law and has no connection with me," he said, adding, with a degree of familiarity, "He was a criminal, alcoholic and a tuberculosis patient. How can anyone retain a TB patient at work amid the coronavirus scare?" Thapar had said Aldrin was fired five months ago, long before the Covid-19 outbreak.ADGP (Agra) Ajay Anand said legal action would be taken on the basis of the suicide note. Udaybhan Singh, however, thought trespassing was the crime to be investigated here. “Police must find out how he managed to enter a shop that had been locked for several days,” he said.Hibu, the last person Aldrin reached out to, said his death was tragic. “We are receiving numerous complaints about the harassment of people from the northeast every day. People should stop doing that.”In his suicide note, Aldrin asked for his body to be taken back to his town. Till the time of filing the report, however, police in neither state have been able to trace his family or friends. The Meghalaya chief minister’s office, in a Facebook post, asked anyone with information about him to share it with Meghalaya Police. Police in Agra, meanwhile, are going through his phone records.