CHENNAI: Four of a family were found dead at their house in Thirumangalam on Thursday. Police suspect it to be a case of death by suicide due to debt. The issue came to light after no one answered the door when the driver and domestic aide came to check on them in the morning.
According to police, the deceased are G Balamurugan (53) of Cheyyar in Tiruvannamalai, a radiologist, his wife B Sumathi (47), a lawyer, their sons B Jaswanth Kumar (18) and B Lingesh Kumar (16). Police said Balamurgan ran a scan centre in the locality. Sumathi was not practising law for a while. Jaswanth had completed his Class 12 last year and was preparing for NEET while Lingesh was a Class 10 student.
Early Thursday morning, Revathy, who was employed as domestic aide, had a severe stomachache and tried calling Balamurugan several times to ask him for tablets, but there was no response. She then contacted the driver, Ramachadran.
Around 5 am, Ramachandhran, Revathy and the apartment complex’s security guard Jayaraman knocked at Balamurugan’s door. When nobody answered it, the trio broke open the door and found the family dead in three separate rooms. They alerted the police who sent the bodies for postmortem. No suicide note has been recovered by the police as yet.
Preliminary inquiries suggest that Balamurugan incurred a debt of Rs 5 crore as he had availed loans from several banks. Police suspect Balamurugan, unable to repay the loans, might have taken the extreme step. Police are conducting a probe to find if the family had been harassed by money lenders.
(Assistance for those having suicidal thoughts is available on health helpline 104 and Sneha’s helpline 044-24640050)