Cops book wife for man’s suicide

6 Nov 2008, 0302 hrs IST, TNN

NAGPUR: Five days after Vitthal Dodke, a resident of the Ayodhya Nagar, committed suicide, Sakkardara police have registered offences against six persons, including his wife, for allegedly abetting the man to end his life. Police have already dispatched units to arrest the accused, but till Wednesday evening, none had been taken into custody.

Behind the scenes, one may say that it was due to the efforts put in by members of the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), an organisation consisting mostly of men tortured by their wives, which did the trick. Otherwise, the police had not registered offence against anyone despite the fact that Dodke had mentioned in his suicide note that his wife had driven him to commit suicide.

Offences under section 306 of the IPC have been registered against six accused identified as Dodke’s wife Saroj, her family members Ashok Kshirsagar, Prakash Kshirsagar, their father Natthuji Kshirsagar and his wife, as well as one Ramkrishna Pimpalkar. The offences were registered late on Wednesday evening.

However, despite this, members of the SIFF, led by Rajesh Wakharia, organised a demonstration outside the Sakkardara police station on Wednesday morning, to protest the inordinate delay by the cops to register offence against the accused. The situation was diffused after the policemen informed them that they had already sent squads to bring in the accused.

Dodke had committed suicide by hanging himself at his home. His body had been discovered at on October 31. During primary investigations, police recovered a suicide note in which Dodke had said that his wife was pressurising him to have his parental house transferred in her name, and had been threatening to lodge false complaints at the local police station and have him and his family arrested if he did not comply with her demands.

Incidentally, this is the third case in a year in the city of a woman being booked by the police for allegedly driving her husband to suicide. In a similar incident in Ajni a few months ago, a city corporator and her family had been booked by the police after being accused of abetting her husband to commit suicide.