Depressed Stephen’s professor murders mother, kills himself in Delhi
NEW DELHI: The decapitated body of a Delhi University professor was found on railway tracks and that of his mother hanging from a ceiling fan with her mouth stuffed with cloth at their flat in Pitampura, the police said on Sunday.
Hours after Lissy (55) was found hanging at the flat in Ashiana Apartment, the police spotted Allen Stanley’s (27) body. They hailed from Kottayam. Stanley was a guest professor at St Stephen’s College, where he taught Philosophy.
He graduated from the same college and was pursuing PhD at IIT-Delhi. Police suspect Stanley committed suicide after killing his mother. However, no suicide note was recovered with Stanley’s body, but a note written in Malayalam was found. The mother-son duo was suffering from depression because of an abetment-to-suicide case against them. Both were on anticipatory bail, the police said.
Five days ago, Stanley told his friends he tried to force his mother to commit suicide but she refused, the police claimed. “Some seven months ago, his step-father committed suicide at his Kottayam house,” a friend said, adding the mother-son duo was framed up in the case.
“The relatives of the step-father tried to pass it off as natural death. But when Lissy learnt about her husband’s suicide and the property he left in her name, his relatives sought to pin the blame for his death on Lissy,” the friends said. A n o t h e r a n g l e emerged on their alleged media trial in Kerala.
“Articles published in regional media in Kerala compared them with the Kerala serial murders. Stanley and his mother were targeted by trolls and misogynistic comments were made against his mother,” another professor said.
“The public humiliation was unbearable for Stanley and his mother,” he said.
(Assistance to overcome suicidal thoughts is available on Tamil Nadu’s health helpline 104 and Sneha’s suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050.)