JAGATSINGHPUR: In a shocking incident, a 32-year-old woman allegedly died by suicide after drowning her two differently-abled daughters in a pond of Janardanpur within Kujang police limits here.
The victim, Subhadra Patra allegedly resorted to the extreme measures on Monday following torture over dowry and extreme poverty.
Kujang police arrested the deceased’s husband Lambodar Parida, treating it as a dowry-related crime.
Subhadra threw her three-year-old daughter Saismruti, and two-year-old Samparna into a pond before hanging herself from a tree. Villagers rushed to the spot and took Subhadra to Kujang community health centre where the doctors declared her dead on arrival.
Erasama fire brigade and ODRAF team launched a search and rescue operation in the pond, recovering the bodies of the two young girls over a period of 24 hours.
Sources said, Subhadra was married to Lambodar from Pokhariapada in 2019. During the wedding, the woman’s family paid `50,000 along with gold ornaments and other household items as dowry. However, Lambodar’s family demanded a motorcycle and an additional `1 lakh which Subhadra’s family could not provide due to financial constraints. Aggrieved by this, her in-laws and husband allegedly tortured her.
Subhadra later gave birth to two daughter and both had speech and hearing impairment. This enraged her in-laws and the physical and mental torture intensified. Last week, unable to bear the torture any longer, Subhadra left her in-law’s house and went to her parents place, asking them to fulfil their demand. Her family members attempted to mediate and returned her to her in-laws’ place.
On Monday, Subhadra called her family, pleading for `1 lakh and warning that her in-laws had threatened to throw her out of the house if the demands were not met.
Soon after, the family received the tragic news from villagers that Subhadra and her two daughters are dead.
Erasama fire officer Bijay Parida said his team recovered bodies of the two girls from the village pond and handed them over to the police. “We recovered the body of the younger daughter yesterday, while the elder daughter was found today after a two-day search operation.”
Subhadra’s brother, Madhab Patra, lodged an FIR with the Kujang police station, after which a dowry death case was registered. Police seized the bodies and sent them for postmortem.
SP Bhawani Shankar Udgata said a dowry death case has been registered and the victim’s husband has been arrested.