A day after he resigned, Santosh Sarode (31), a software engineer, allegedly strangled his two-year-old daughter before hanging himself to death at his three-bedroom apartment at Kudlu Gate near Electronics City here in the intervening hours of Tuesday and Wednesday.
The chilling scene was discovered by his wife Sushma Sarode around 3 a.m. on Wednesday. She found the toddler still breathing and rushed her to a hospital, but the child failed to pull through.
Mr. Sarode, a Product Technical Lead with the ‘Finacle' team of Infosys Technologies Ltd. at Electronics City, had resigned from his job the day before he took the drastic step.
Speaking to presspersons at the Victoria Hospital mortuary where the two bodies were sent for post-mortem, Mr. Sarode's father, Vasanth Rao, a retired government official, revealed that his son had been emotionally unstable. “He had been seeking psychiatric help for depression, stress and anger management at a hospital on Bannerghatta Road,” he said.
According to the Parappana Agrahara police, Mr. Sarode and his daughter Riyaa slept together in a separate bedroom. Ms. Sushma, who was sleeping in the adjoining bedroom, woke up around 3 a.m. to feed her daughter and made her way to where she believed the father and daughter were sleeping
Shocking discovery
When she entered the other bedroom, she found her child's limp body hanging from the curtains at the window. Her husband's lifeless body was hanging from the ceiling fan.
In her statement to the police she said she instinctively ran to the child and found that she was still breathing. She raised an alarm and with the help of neighbours rushed Riyaa to a private hospital on Hosur Road where she was declared dead on arrival.
Meanwhile in a statement, the Infosys management said: “We are saddened by the unfortunate demise of one of our employees under tragic circumstances. Our sympathies and prayers are with the family of the deceased. Infosys will provide all necessary support to the family in their hour of grief.”
