Covid-19 And 'Familicides'

Economic woes and mental health issues precipitated by Covid-19 led to a rise in mass suicides and familicides

- Sravani Sarkar

Ek failure insaan (a failed person). That is how Amit Yadav, 33, signed off the last note of his life in the rain-swept wee hours of August 23 in Bhagirathpura, Indore. He had hanged himself next to the bodies of his 30-year-old wife, Tina, three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Gyana and one-and-a-half-year-old son Divyansh aka Timu. All three had died of poisoning.

The discovery of the bodies in the single-room tenement had sent shockwaves in the congested, old locality where Tina had grown up.

Tina’s parents, who live 100m away, are inconsolable. “What hurts us most is that we are totally unaware of the reason for this extreme step,” said Tina’s father Ramesh Yadav, 67, who retired as a class IV employee of the state government. “Had our daughter spoken to us about whatever problem they had, we would have tried our best to resolve it.”

Amit and Tina got married in 2017. The two were distantly related from Tina’s maternal side. Tina was a graduate and her family was told that Amit was an engineer. But a police probe revealed that he had failed his class 12 exams. Amit lived in Indore with his parents, but moved to his maternal grandparents’ home in Sagar after his father fell sick. After marriage, Amit tried his hand at business with help from Tina’s uncle; it failed, and he suffered a loss of ₹8 lakh. The couple then returned to Indore with their daughter in 2019. Soon, the pandemic-induced lockdown began. Amit and Tina were financially dependent on her parents. Tina and the children would spend the day with her parents. She would take meals to Amit during the day and return to the rented room at night with the children. Once the lockdown was lifted, Amit would leave home early morning lying that he was going to work.