JOIN USAnwesh, the son of Jnanpith award winner and noted Odia writer Pratibha Ray, who was arrested in Bangalore on March 21 by a joint team of Hyderabad police crime branch and local police, in connection with the death of his first wife Sharmistha in mysterious circumstances, was jealous of his wife as she earned more than he was earning at that time.
Anwesh has been accused of abetment to suicide. Police sources said, Sharmistha was earning more than her husband in the software firm where she worked, which led to frequent squabbles. Sharmistha later suffered from schizophrenia due to intense family problems with in-laws and was undergoing treatment.
At the time of her death, Sharmistha was seven months pregnant.
The investigation into the suicide was going on in Hyderabad for the last seven years, during which Anwesh shifted base and got a job in a software firm in Bangalore, where he stayed with his second wife.
Sharmistha, a software engineer like her husband, fell to her death from the fifth floor of an apartment in Srinagar Colony in Banjara Hills here on March 24, 2007.
Ironically, she fell to her death on the same day her mother-in-law Pratibha Ray was being conferred the Padmashri by the President of India in Delhi.
Sharmistha, a topper in BE from BITS Pilani, belonged to a well known family in Bhubaneswar. Her father Pravat Ranjan Mohanty was the former director general of Forests, and former chairman of Odisha Public Service Commission. At present, Anwesh is cooling his heels in jail, after the Sixth Metropolitan Magistrate court here remanded him in custody.