Upendra Shukla, Mehrauli
“He did not seem like a man who could do something as gory as this,” said Bittu, a neighbour of Upendra Kumar Shukla , the 42-year-old private tutor who admitted to killing his wife and three minor children.
“He sat next to the bodies for an hour thinking how to kill himself. He first tried to slit his wrist and then popped some pills and lost consciousness. He regrets not dying,” said an investigator who spent more than 24 hours with Upendra in the hospital before he was produced in the court.
The tutor allegedly fed sedative-laced milk to his wife Archana, their eight-year-old daughter, six-year-old son and a month-old baby boy on the night of June 22 and then slit their throats. The bodies were found early morning by Archana’s mother Lalita Devi.
Shri Prakash, Gurugram
The story of Shri Prakash, a scientist with a pharmaceutical firm, stands apart for the extent of brutality inflicted by the man on his wife Sonu Singh (52), daughter Aditi (22) and 14-year-old son on the night of July 1.
Station House Officer, Sector 50, Shahid Ahmed, who investigated the case, said it was difficult to imagine that a man could murder his own wife and children with such brutality. Their autopsy revealed that the wife had maximum 19 injuries and her throat was slit. The son had 12 injuries and the daughter had eight. It is suspected that the three were not given any sedatives before being bludgeoned to death.
According to the police, the daughter was perhaps murdered in her sleep, but the mother and son were awake and tried to escape. How Prakash overpowered them and why he killed them so mercilessly find no mention in the note he wrote before hanging himself in the living room.
Pradeep Kumar, Ghaziabad
On July 4, Pradeep Kumar (37), an unemployed man, went about his day normally. He woke up early morning and left for his training at a garment factory at Vishwas Nagar. He returned home in Ghaziabad’s New Shatabdipuram around 4 p.m., and rested for a while.
His wife Sangeeta (40), a nurse at a de-addiction centre, came home around 7 p.m. with three new bicycles for their three daughters — the eldest one was eight-year-old, the second one was five and the youngest one only three years old. Pradeep took them out on the street and taught them how to ride the bicycles.
Around 5 a.m. on July 5, Pradeep’s sister Reena and parents Feru Ram and Sheela Devi heard the children crying. They asked Pradeep to open the door. He said, “Wait... I am talking to Sangeeta. I am talking to the kids.” The three at the door could hear some rumblings inside the room. A few minutes later, all went silent.
Pradeep hammered his wife to death and smothered his children using a black duct tape. He then used the same tape to kill himself.
Sumit Kuma r, Ghaziabad
Sumit Kumar, a software engineer from Gyan Khand area of Indirapuram, thought he had a foolproof plan to eliminate his family and then take his own life. Years of drug addiction and his inability to continue in a job for long had made it impossible for him to take care of his wife Anshu Bala (32) and three minor kids — a five-year-old son and four-year-old twins (a girl and a boy). On the night of April 20, Sumit offered them a drug-laced beverage. He slit the throat of his eldest son first because he “loved him the most”.
Sumit made a video on his mobile phone confessing to the crime and posted it on the family WhatsApp group. He told the police he had stolen ₹20,000 to buy cyanide from a medicine shop owner he knew closely. The poison, however, turned out to be fake and he failed to kill himself. Not knowing what to do, he fled the house but was arrested two days later.
Financial burden
The circumstances of the four incidents may have been different but the reason for the murders seem to be the same — financial stress and inability to cope with pressure.
The scientist had resigned from his job a month ago due to ill-health and had incurred losses in two ventures he started with his wife — a crèche in Sector 49 and a school in Palwal. SHO Ahmed said Prakash had confided in his business partner that he had unpaid loans of ₹1.5 crore, including ₹85 lakh home loan. The loss of job had added to the financial woes of the family, said Mr. Ahmed.
The tutor, on the other hand, had been advised by doctors to keep his blood pressure in check and his wife had been diagnosed with diabetes during her pregnancy. He was worried about the well-being of his family, given his limited income.
In the other two cases, the men were struggling to find a stable job and bear the expenses of their families.
Dr. Arti Anand, clinical psychologist at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said the men in all the four cases had lost the will to continue. “This happens when a person is in severe depression and when they experience extreme hopelessness. Also, when they see that nothing is going to solve their problems, they resort to the extreme step,” she said.
The doctor said that the possible reason behind killing the family members was to spare them the trauma of living without him. “In the Mehrauli case, the man [Upendra] saw no hope, if he would have, he would have taken some steps to find some solution,” she said.
Health concerns
The officer who investigated Upendra’s case said the tutor “cared so much for his family that he killed them all”.
Upendra had been taking medicines for blood pressure and insomnia for the last one and a half months. “Something very strange had got stuck in his head. His mother in Bihar and his wife had advised him not to step out in the heat because of his blood pressure problem. He started thinking that if he will not go out in the afternoon, how will he take tuitions and earn for his family. The thought gave him sleepless nights,” the officer said.
“Archana was diagnosed with diabetes during her third pregnancy. After delivering the baby, she fell ill and started behaving erratically. She blamed the baby for her health problems. Two days before the fateful night, she stopped feeding milk to him. At that point Upendra started worrying about the future of his kids,” the officer said.
“This man had lost all hope. In fact, we feared that he might do something untoward, so we didn’t leave his side [in the hospital],” the officer said.
Upendra was financially sound and used to take care of his niece and nephew’s education too, the officer said. “In our investigation, no violent incident in his past has come to the fore,” he said.
Did Upendra ever seek medical help for his wife or himself? The investigator said that the man took his wife to government and private hospitals to seek help for her mental condition. He, however, never sought help for himself or believed that he needed it.
Dr. Anand stressed the need for awareness about depression in men. “In our society men are taught to be tough. They are expected not to show when they are sad. This stops them from communicating and taking treatment. Awareness regarding depression and mood disorders has to be spread in a big way,” she said.
Drugs and depression
Even when signs of disturbed behaviour are apparent, family members, at times, tend to play them down or ignore them. In Sumit’s case, Anshu Bala learnt about his addiction soon after their marriage in 2011, but did not raise an alarm.
“One day my sister saw Sumit injecting himself with some drug. She asked him about it but he did not answer. Later, she found out about his addiction but asked us not to discuss it with Sumit as she was confident of making him quit,” said Anshu’s brother Pankaj Singh.
Sumit changed seven jobs after his marriage. “He used to lie about his work but one day a company sent the termination letter home and my sister caught his lie,” added Mr. Singh.
The officer investigating Sumit’s case said he was a drug addict since his college days. “He used to purchase drugs from a particular medical store in Indirapuram. He had asked the store owner to get him cyanide but the man handed him some non-poisonous liquid,” said the officer.
In some cases, people suffering from mental stress exhibit absolutely no sign for others to read what’s going on in their head.
Pradeep’s sister Reena believes he behaved normal the day before the murders because he didn’t want them to know about his plan. “If we had the slightest idea, we would have at least saved the children,” said Reena.
A seven-page note, the police claimed, was recovered from Pradeep in which he wrote that he loved his wife but suspected that she was having an affair. The couple’s relationship allegedly strained after the entry of a man who has been arrested on charges of abetment to suicide. The family knows him as Luv, but the police say his name is Kapil (22). Reena said Sangeeta brought him home claiming he was her ‘ muhbolabhai ’ [like a brother] but their proximity bothered the husband. Pradeep was never stable in his profession. His father, a retired Chief Petty Officer in the Indian Navy, had been taking care of the household. Pradeep’s drinking habit which he picked up about three years ago added to the couple’s troubles. But Reena maintained her brother loved Sangeeta and wanted her to care for him the same way.
Dr. Rajat Mitra, another criminal psychologist, argued that the murders are never an outcome of love. “When you kill, you kill with a lot of anger and intense rage you have towards the other person. Research does not show that people who love their families do anything like that. They get violent because of disturbances, delusions and false beliefs in their head,” he said.
Suicide prevention helpline: Sanjivini, Society for Mental Health, 011-4076 9002, Monday-Saturday (10 a.m.-7.30 p.m.)
