The Cuffe Parade police investigating the untimely death of an Indian Navy sailor, his wife and their two children have learnt that the deceased woman had apprehended that her husband could kill her and their children and her father had recently tried to take them away, but was unsuccessful.
“The woman had called her father a week ago and told him that she was afraid her husband, who was suffering from depression for several months, would kill them. So the father came to Mumbai and tried to take them away, but the sailor got into an argument with him and didn’t allow his wife and kids to leave,” said Manish Kalwaniya, deputy commissioner of police (zone I).
As reported by HT on Monday, the 30-year-old sailor, his wife and their two children aged three years and two months respectively were found dead in the sailor’s official residence at Navy Nagar on Sunday, with the police suspecting it to be a case of murder-suicide.
According to the police, the family hailed from Rajasthan and the couple was married for nearly four years. They had frequent arguments and their respective families did not talk to each other as the woman came from a poor family, investigators said. “No one from the sailor and his wife’s families barring the sailor’s mother had even visited Mumbai to see their two-month-old daughter,” an officer familiar with the case said, requesting not to be identified.
The sailor was under treatment for depression for several months and he used to talk often about death, leading his wife to suspect that he could kill her and their children, the officer noted.
Investigators suspect that the sailor first killed his wife and children and died by suicide in the adjacent room a day later, after cleaning the other room and deleting everything from his mobile phone. He had placed a bed against the door of the room where he died by suicide to ensure no one could enter.
“We are not sure how the sailor killed everyone, but we suspect that he might have poisoned them by mixing something in their food or giving them injections, as foam was oozing out from the mouths of all the deceased,” the officer quoted earlier said.