Six months after 23-year-old Geetika Sharma ended her lifeafter allegedly being harassed by her former employer and then Haryana Minister Gopal Kanda, her 52-year-old mother Anuradha Sharma hanged herself, in the same room in which her daughter committed suicide, at their Ashok Vihar house here on Friday.
She left behind a suicide note in which she blamed Mr. Kanda and his close aide Aruna Chadha for her daughter’s death which, she said, left her sad and depressed.
The police have registered a case of abetment to suicide against Kanda and Chadha. If needed, the police said the two — who are at present lodged in Tihar Central Jail — will be taken into custody for interrogation.
Earlier in August last, Geetika too had blamed Mr. Kanda and Ms. Chadha for her suicide, accusing them of ruining her life, cheating her and also attempting to harm her family. Ms. Sharma was the first informant in her daughter’s suicide case.
A government employee, Ms. Sharma returned home from office around 4.30 p.m. A little later, her sister-in-law Jyoti, who lives on another floor of the same building, came looking for her. When she did not get a response to repeated knocks at the door, she peeped in through the window and saw Ms. Sharma’s body hanging from the ceiling. She immediately alerted Geetika’s father Dinesh Sharma, who rushed home and unlocked the door. The victim’s son also reached home around 6.30 p.m.
The police received a call about the incident at 5.50 p.m. and senior police officers rushed to the spot. Ms. Sharma was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival. She could never overcome the shock of having lost her daughter and the family mostly kept to themselves since the tragic incident, neighbours said.
Although the police denied that the family had complained about being pressured for a compromise in Geetika’s case, they said they were studying the contents of the suicide note and all angles were being probed.
Geetika, who earlier worked as a flight attendant with the now defunct MDLR Airlines owned by Mr. Kanda, was found dead in her house on August 5 last year. On the basis of the suicide note and follow-up enquiries, the police booked Mr. Kanda and Ms. Chadha.
While Ms. Chadha was soon arrested, Mr. Kanda evaded the police for several days before he made a dramatic appearance one day in the early hours and gave himself up at the Ashok Vihar police station.