Debt. No one likes to be in debt. Dinkar Shelar was no different. And when the burden became unbearable, he took the drastic step of wiping off his entire family and then jumping in front of a train.
Not many people in Jhambwadi Chawl, near Park Site, Vikhroli, a suburb in eastern Mumbai, knew of his precarious financial condition.
Shelar, an auto-rickshaw driver, had taken a 10×10 sq feet house in Jhambwadi Chawl on rent, about two years back. His family comprised his wife Deepali, eight-year-old daughter Snehal and one-and-half year-old son Veeraj.
"His children used to play in front of our house all the time. Snehal was studying in school. God knows why such things happens," said a neighbour Samarjeet Jaiswal. "Shelar never used to mention his problems. But I noticed he had not been driving his auto-rickshaw for the last 15 days. He had given it to someone else."
Shelar had called up to his brother, who lives in Dadar, early on Monday morning and asked him to come to his house urgently with some money. The brother called up a neighbour, Flemina Almeda, to find out if everything was all right.
"Dinkar's brother called at my house early morning at 5am. He told me to call somebody from Dinkar's house urgently. When I went to his house, the door was locked from outside," Flemina said.
She unlocked the door and went inside. Everybody was asleep. She tried to wake up them but nobody responded. Then she realised that their bodies were very cold. She alerted other neighbours and informed the police.
Police found a letter near the dead bodies of Deepali and the children. Shelar wrote that nobody is responsible for his death and he took the drastic step because of his poor financial condition.
Apparently, Shelar had killed his wife and children in the early hours of Monday and then went to Vikhroli railway station where jumped in front of a local train.
However it's case of suicide, but police is also checking any other possibility of their death.
Police have sent the bodies for post-mortem and are verifying Shelar's handwriting to rule out any possibility of foul play.