Doctor couple in Bangalore commit suicide along with sons

Bangalore, December 3: A doctor couple and their two sons, one a medical graduate are susp­ected to have injected themselves with a paralytic drug, in a suicide pact at their house-cum-hospital at 4th Cross, 2nd Main, Val­miki Nagar, off Mysore Road here on Thursday midnight.

Mohammad Amanullah (61), his wife Naveeda Banu (50), and their sons — Mohammad Ehtesham Rasheed (28) and Mohammad Afham Rasheed (26) — allegedly injected Succinylcholine, a paralytic drug associated with rapid muscle breakdown that leads to life-threatening heart rhythms, to commit suicide in what police suspected was driven by huge debts.

The couple’s adopted daughter Naziya (22)?said she suspected something was afoot when she was locked in her bedroom by her parents minutes earlier. Naziya kept pleading with her adopted father to open the door, but her pleas were met only by a mysterious silence. She could not use her mobile phone either as it had been taken away.

“Main saari raat darwaaza peet leko rahi” (All through the night, I kept knocking on the door),” Naziya told Deccan Herald. The suicide came to light around 6 am when Naziya screamed from the window to a boy passing by. The boy sprinted to the family’s hospital — Khuda Care Nursing Home — located on the first two storeys of the building which housed their residence on the second floor, and called the senior nurse, Rehana.

Rehana rushed to the house and found the four lying on a blue-mat on the floor in the hall, with their bodies covered in bedclothes. She thought they were asleep and hence hesitated to wake them up.

She then called out for Naziya who told her that she was locked in the bedroom. Rehana first opened the door and then, on Naziya’s entreaties, tried to wake the family members. They were dead long ago. In no time, the whole building echoed with wails.

Although the police found no suicide note, they suspected a large debt might have driven the family to take the extreme step. Amanullah hailed from Kolar and Naveeda from Mysore. Amanullah first ran a clinic before setting up the hospital about 15 years ago.

The couple spent a lot on their sons’ education. Ehtesham graduated from M S Ramaiah Medical College, Bangalore, and Afham was pursuing final year MBBS at a college in Kolar, the police said. Amanullah had set another hospital at Shamanna Garden, about two km away, where he practiced more. Fayyaz Ahmad, husband of his sister-in-law, said the family owed a debt of not more than Rs one crore.