In debt, Mathura man kills wife, daughter and hangs self

AGRA: At a time when the country’s biggest loan defaulter, Vijay Mallya, is sitting pretty in London despite owing Rs 9,000 crores of taxpayers’ money, a RSS worker, Ashok Pratap Singh (48), who owed Rs 50 lakhs to some lenders after his business failed, killed his wife and 13 year old mentally challenged daughter and then committed suicide in Mathura on Friday.
Ashok, who was apparently depressed due to his poor financial state due to his failed business, poisoned both his wife, Neeta (45) and Aastha, and then hung himself to a ceiling fan at his relative’s house in Shreejee Garden. Their bodies were discovered at about 7am when the deceased’s elder brother, Rajveer Singh, rushed to his house after receiving a text message from Ashok advising him not to waste any time and money on their cremation rituals.
In fact, this was the second message that Ashok had sent to his brother since last night but unfortunately Rajveer, who isn’t so tech savvy, failed to see them in time. In the first message sent at around 10 PM Ashok wrote that he was a failure and hence had lost all interest to live. He also told his brother that this would be his last greeting to him.
Ashok reportedly sent the second message to Rajveer at 6 am and the latter read it almost half an hour later around 6:30 am. Had Rajveer seen the message in time, the family could have been saved.
Ashok is survived by his sons, Piyush (26) and Vaibhav (22), who live in NOIDA and Gaziabad respectively. Both are reportedly studying and pursuing part time jobs to meet their expenses.
One of Ashok’s relatives, Prakash, told TOI he had started a business of manufacturing bitumen, which is used for road surfacing, with three other partners. However, the business did not do well, forcing them to close it down seven months ago.
Prakash said ever since then Ashok had been trying hard to revive in his business and was even looking for jobs. He had in fact decided to leave Mathura and settle in Faridabad where he had found some job a week ago.
However, Prakash did not know the details of Ashok’s new job.
Prakash revealed that Ashok was under severe stress due to his financial troubles. He said that he owed Rs 50 lakhs that he had raised as loan to start his business.
According to senior police officials, while investigations are in progress, preliminary inquiries have revealed that Ashok had taken loan from private money lenders. It is still to be verified, if he was being pressurised by the lender to pay off their debts.