A roadside eatery owner committed suicide by consuming food laced with poison along with his wife and two daughters due to alleged harassment by his business rivals.
Police, however, suspect that he might have taken the extreme step after failing to repay huge loans.
Nagesh, 35, hailing from Mandya district, ran a roadside eatery at ITPL. But he lived with his family in a rented house in KR Puram.
According to police, his business was thriving but rivals became angry as they were losing money. They wanted him to shift the eatery elsewhere which he refused to. He used to have fights with them over this.
It is said that the shopkeepers even filed a case against him and got him arrested. After spending some time in jail, he got bail and was back in business.
This time, his rivals warned him that they would use black magic to ruin his family.
On Thursday night, during dinner, he gave his wife and two children food laced with poison and consumed a portion of it himself, ending all their troubles.
On Friday morning, neighbours became suspicious when Nagesh did not come out of his rented house. Their knocks on the door also got no response. They called the police who soon arrived and shifted the bodies to Dr Ambedkar Medical College for postmortem.
“We did not find any death note at the crime scene,” deputy commissioner of police (east) TG Krishna Bhat said. Debt trap/death trap
Preliminary inquiries revealed that Nagesh had taken huge loan and his failure to repay it could be the reason behind the extreme step.
However, Nagesh’s parents, who came to claim the bodies, alleged that he used to complain to them about being harassed by shopkeepers and vendors.
The deceased, besides Nagesh, were Girijamma, 27, Pavitra, 12 and Divya, 9.
Pavitra was studying in 6thstandard in Amarjyoti School and Divya was a fourth grader in a private school situated near their home.
