Vadodara housewife sets herself ablaze, dies

The Karelibaug police are investigating the death of a 28-year old woman, who allegedly set herself on fire late on Tuesday evening after being “tired of illness”. In her suicide note, the woman has asked her husband to take care of their two children aged four and three months and requested her father to celebrate her brother’s upcoming January wedding without any restrain.

Rita Gadhvi, a resident of Harni in Vadodara, set herself on fire in the bedroom of her tenement after “being tired of prolonged illness”. In a suicide note scribbled in her four year old son Aarav’s school note book, the woman has asked her husband to raise their two children – another three month old daughter, Bansri – well. “Give them good education. I am forced to take this extreme step to end my life because I am tired of my illness,” she writes in the note. The woman also addressed a note to her father, who is a resident of Limdi, asking the family to “celebrate my brother’s wedding with pomp and show, without holding on to any grief”. Rita’s brother, Nilesh, who works as an engineer in a private company, is to get married in January.

According to the police, Rita doused herself with kerosene before setting herself on fire inside the first floor bedroom of her bungalow while her husband, Nikunj, was away for his transport business late on Tuesday. Rita’s father in law was visiting his older son while her mother-in-law was in the lower floor of their tenement with Bansri. Rita’s mother in law has told the police that she had just begun looking for Rita as Bansri was wailing out for her mother, when the neighbours ran in to inform the mother-in-law that flames were visible through the window of their first floor bedroom.

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“The neighbors broke open the bedroom door and found Rita ablaze. The neighbors and Rita’s mother in law called for the ambulance but before it could arrive, Rita had succumbed to her burns. We have found her suicide note in her son’s note book and we are accordingly investigating the case. We will record the statements of her family to understand what illness Rita was suffering from,” says PSI P Rambhai of Karelibaug police station.

Rita and her husband, Nikunj, who runs a transport business were married for five years.