“He is no longer the man I had known…. He doesn’t love me anymore,” wrote Meena Sharma, the wife of Lance Naik Vinod Kumar, in her suicide note before she hanged herself last month.
This was the gist of the allegations she levelled against Vinod in the 10-page-long note that she left behind in February. Rajouri residents Vinod and Meena (25 when she died) had married each other last year after four years of courtship and despite their respective families being against the marriage.
“The families were not willing to accept the union in the beginning but soon came on board. However, fissures developed in the marriage when Vinod started torturing his wife, something that finds mention in her suicide note as well,” said a police officer who had investigated Meena’s suicide.
He added that since then Meena had found her whole world crashing down. In her note, she documented how much her life had changed in just a few months of their marriage.
An SDM level inquiry had indicted Vinod and it concluded that he had indeed abetted the suicide of his wife. Following the incident, a case under Sections 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306 (Abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code was registered at the Delhi Cantonment police station.
He was subsequently arrested and brought to jail where for the first couple of days, he remained aloof and sad about the demise of his wife.
Soon, however, he started mingling with his inmates.
Hence his suicide came as a sudden shock to some of those who shared the same cell, said the jail officials.
