The bodies of a woman and her two-year-old son, the latter tied with a cloth to her body, were found hanging in the kitchen of their home at Nedumkad under the Karamana police station limits here early Friday.
According to the Karamana police, the bodies of Manju, 38, a native of Peyad, and her son, Abhishek, two, were found around 1 a.m. on Friday by relatives and neighbours, who found a foul smell emanating from the house. They had moved recently to the house as tenants. The bodies were found hanging on a cloth from an iron clamp on the roof of the kitchen. The bodies were in a highly decomposed state and suspected to be at least three days old.
Manju’s husband, Renjith, was missing but was traced later in the day and the police are questioning him. The police said it was suspected that the child could have been first throttled to death before Manju resorted to the extreme step. Manju and the child were last seen on January 20, when she visited a relative living nearby around 4 p.m.
The death is suspected to have been some time later that day, the police said, adding that Renjith had stated that he, after an argument, had been away from home for the last three days.
The family was said to have been in deep financial distress, with Renjith suspected to be an alcoholic. However, with relatives crying foul, the police are questioning him while fingerprint experts collected evidence from the scene on Friday. An inquest was held in the presence of the Revenue Divisional Officer and the bodies were handed over to the relatives later in the day after autopsy at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital.
The police said a suicide note was recovered from the house, with handwriting experts verifying whether it was written by Manju herself. Manju was employed at a tailor-shop while Renjith had no regular job or income, according to the police.
