Man ends life, kin allege harassment by councillor

A 45-year-old man committed suicide by hanging at his house in Amruthahalli on Thursday morning. The victim's relatives claim Shankarappa committed suicide due to harassment by the local councillor over an alleged theft at the latter’s house a month ago.

Shankarappa was found hanging in his room by his wife in the morning. She alerted her family members and neighbours, who in turn informed the police. The police rushed to the spot and shifted his body to M S Ramaiah Hospital for postmortem. The police did not find any suicide note and added that nobody had filed a complaint in this regard.

Shankarappa ran a centring material shop.

Meanwhile, P V Manjunath, councillor of ward no. 7, Byatarayanapura, told DH that neither Shankarappa nor his family members were subjected to harassment.

A 25-year-old servant maid Nalini working at Manjunath’s house used to steal jewellery and pledged them with Shankarappa and his wife Saraswathi who offered money on interest to Nalini.

A month ago, during Varamahalakshmi, Manjunath’s wife got to know that the jewellery was missing and informed her husband. Her husband discovered that it was Nalini who sneaked out jewellery from the house. Since Nalini had been working at their house for a long time, the councillor did not want to pull her up. He told Nalini that if she returned the stolen jewellery, he will not file a complaint against her.

Nalini then approached Shankarappa and Saraswathi and asked them to return the gold. The couple refused to return the jewellery till Nalini repaid the money she had borrowed from them. Manjunath then sought police intervention to recover his jewellery. “We managed to recover jewellery worth Rs 20 lakh from them, but there was another set of jewellery worth Rs 30 lakh yet to be recovered,” he said.

On Thursday, morning Shankarappa committed suicide, and the police attributed it to depression as he had financial issues and was an alcoholic.