JOIN USA 26-year-old woman smothered her two small children, including a one-year-old daughter, before attempting to end her life by slitting the left wrist at her home in Tarabanahalli in Soladevanahalli police station limits on Saturday evening.
Police said the woman was distressed by her family’s financial condition as her husband was pestering her to get money from her mother for constructing a house.
Rashmi, the mother, smothered her son Anthony Nithin, 6, and one-year-old daughter Mary Prarthana before attempting to chock herself to death and slitting her left wrist, the police said. Her husband, Joachim, an ambulance driver, returned home around 10 pm.
He knocked on the door repeatedly but there was no response. He then peeped through the window and saw the children lying apparently unconscious and the wife in a pool of blood. He screamed for help and with the help of neighbours broke the door open. All the three were taken to a hospital which declared the children brought dead while Rashmi is stable and recovering.
A senior police officer, who visited the house, said, “We suspect that the mother smothered her two children and later attempted to kill herself. She was saved in the nick of time by her husband and neighbours or else would have succumbed to death due to blood loss.”
The couple, who got married eight years ago, had recently rented a home in Tarabanahalli because Joachim wanted to construct a house on a site bought by his father in Silvepura. The family earlier stayed at the house of Rashmi’s mother.
After moving to the rented accommodation, Joachim began pestering Rashmi to get money from her mother so that he could construct the house. He wanted his mother-in-law to mortgage her house and giver the money to him.
But Rashmi vehemently opposed this and told him that her mother had helped them all these days and now she would not trouble her any more. The couple would fight over the matter every day, the police said.
Things soon became difficult as Rashmi thought there was no way out of the financial difficulty. She also worried about her children’s future. So she decided to kill her children and herself.
“She is said to be out of danger and the doctors have been monitoring her health. Once she recovers, we will arrest her,” the officer said.