Debt killed this family of three.
Anil Kumar, 38, his wife Sreeja, in her mid-thirties are believed to have committed suicide by hanging themselves in two different rooms, after suffocating their eight-year-old daughter Anishree to death and later hanging her from a ceiling fan in another room.
The family were found dead in a villa in Ras Al Khaimah on Friday.
It now emerges, from a close family friend, who found the bodies, that Kumar was so heavily in debt that is must have driven him to take the extreme step.
The child’s face was covered with a cloth when it was found. Police are treating the case as a murder and suicide.
Jaffer Al Deen Abdul Salam, a real estate agent who had helped Kumar rent the villa in Ras Al Khaimah eight months ago told ‘Emirates24|7′ that the couple were left with no money to even buy food or medicines.
“I knew they were in some sort of financial trouble because their rent cheques bounced. I spoke to Nayar’s wife Sreeja on August 21, when for the first time, she explained to me in detail the financial mess they were in,” he said.
Kumar had started a business a few years back. He had purchased trailer trucks with bank loans of more than Dh300,000.
With the current market situation, he went out of business. Following an accident in Oman involving one of his trucks, his situation worsened.
Finally, he started driving a truck himself and at times used to work 24 hours at a stretch. But his debts only increased.
He was unable to even pay a monthly bank installment of Dh10,000. To deal with the situation he applied for several credit cards and things got worse.
“On August 21 when I visited their house, the child was unwell, but her mother had no money to even take her to the hospital. Finally, I had to force her to accept Dh100 for hospital expenditure. I even told her to return to India with the child, but she was worried about her husband,” he said.
Sreeja had even told Jaffer that her husband was struggling as many of his payments were held up. “Several companies that did business with him were also delaying payments. He had shown me many post-dated cheques. But at the end of the day they were of no use,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kumar had tried to sell his Nisan Tiida for Dh9,000. “There was a buyer. But unfortunately he could not complete the transfer as he had a Dh5,000 fine on one of his trucks and another case that was registered by a bank. The buyer backed out and Kumar returned disappointed,” he said.
Jaffer says he then asked Kumar to seek help from the Indian Association in Sharjah and had even prepared a letter on his behalf. “For some reason he never turned up. The next day I went to India for Eid and returned only on Friday,” said Jaffer, who later visited the villa in the evening.
“I first knocked on the door but when there was no response, I had to call the police and we had to break open the door only to find the three dead bodies,” he adds.
The police have completed the post mortem and efforts are on to repatriate the bodies after the completion of necessary documentation.
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