Man injects wife, children with poison, hangs himself

A realtor-cum-financier allegedly murdered his wife and two children by injecting them with poison and then killed himself by hanging at his residence at Vakil Garden near Talaghattapura in Ramanagar district late on Thursday night.

Police gave the names of the victims as Kaushik P Sharma, 40; his wife Srilatha, 36; son Kaustubh, 9; and daughter Sriraksha, 11.

The police found a suicide note allegedly written by Sharma stating that nobody was responsible for the deaths. He had also alleged that Reddy, a Hyderabad City Crime Station police officer, had grabbed his money, ornaments and sites.

According to the police, Sharma had written with his blood on a wall of his house: ‘AP police Reddy, CCS Hyderabad, our money, gold and site’. He had also left behind a will nominating his brother’s daughter Sumegha as heir to his entire property.

Sharma, a native of Udupi, had lived in the United States for some time before moving to Vakil Garden three years ago. He had reportedly bought close to 200 acres of land near Kollegal recently. He had bought three sites in Valik Garden as well. Kaustubh and Sriraksha were studying in Class III and Class IV, respectively, at a local school. Srilatha was a homemaker.

On Thursday night, Sharma called up Sumegha and requested her to come to his residence on Friday at 10.30 am. He told her that his family members were going out and wanted to hand over a gift box to her. He disconnected the call abruptly, said the police.

Sumegha went to Sharma’s house the next day at 10.30 am and the security guard called him up to seek his permission for Sumegha’s entry. But there was no response to repeated calls. Sumegha and the guard grew suspicious and peeped through the window and found Kaustubh and Sriraksha lying still on the floor. They sensed something amiss and contacted the police.

The police who rushed to the spot broke open the door and found the bodies of Sharma and Srilatha in a room. A couple of medicine bottles and syringes were found nearby.

Police said Sharma had poisoned his children and then hanged his son and daughter to the grill of a staircase to ensure they were dead. Later, he moved the bodies into a room. The police are yet to ascertain what drove Sharma to take the extreme step.

The bodies were shifted to Rajarajeshwari Medical College and Hospital for postmortem.Preliminary investigation has revealed that Sharma injected his wife and children and killed them before hanging himself, Ramanagar SP Anupam Agarwal said.

“Some miscreants had attacked Kaushik a week ago. They allegedly abducted him, thrashed and let him off with a warning. They always tailed him wherever he went. This had depressed him,” said a police officer.