Software engineer kills wife before committing suicide
Suspecting his wife’s fidelity, a 30-year-old software engineer strangulated her to death before hanging himself in a shocking incident in Bangalore.
Police said Amit Budhiraj, a software engineer from Delhi employed with a leading Information Technology (IT) company in Bangalore, had allegedly smothered his wife Rinku Sachdeva, 28, a marketing professional working for a multinational bank, with a pillow and later hanged himself from a ceiling fan in their house in Koramangala in Bangalore.
The incident came to light when Rinku’s friend Urmila came to their house on Sunday to pick her up for a movie after her repeated phone calls went unanswered. Urmila was worried when she found her friend’s house locked from inside with all the lights on. Milk and newspapers lay strewn before the door. She immediately alerted the owner, who stayed on the first floor of the same building.
The police was also summoned soon and the house was opened with a spare key only to find Rinku’s dead body lying on the bed while Amit’s body hanging from the ceiling fan in a separate room.
The police also recovered a suicide note left behind by Amit, who said that he had killed his wife over an alleged extra marital affair with a colleague. In the elaborate suicide note, police said, Amit had claimed that he had collected evidence of his wife’s reported extramarital affair in his laptop. The police have seized the laptop.
“Rinku told me when we got married that she should murder me and them commit suicide if she ever found out that I had an extramarital affair. I have only followed her idea”, said the police quoting from Amit’s suicide note.
The police sent the dead bodies to St John’s Hospital in Bangalore for a post mortem. Rinku’s parents arrived in Bangalore from Muscat while Amit’s flew into the City from Delhi.
1 comment:
A lot has been written in Indian newspapers, some of which, too disgusting and painful to comprehend. I will start my discussion with sharing the facts of Rinkus life written by her close friend from Bangalore (Being anonymous was this individuals choice and I respect it, I cannot however thank this individual enough for being there for Rinku in her time of need).
Also to all reading this please ask yourself this question IS PERCEIVED INFEDILITY ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR MURDER. FOR THAT MATTER DOES ANYTHING JUSTIFY MURDER. We gave our Daughter/ Sister to this individual to build a life with and take care of, we believed in his integrity, his promise to be by her side at all times. If we had any inclination of his demonic mind we could have rather had her be by our side and not married in the first place.
I can’t believe me and dad took her hand and handed it to this monster. And also stop this stupidity of saying we would have gone after the Dowry allegation, LET ME BE VERY CLEAR ON THIS we would not have got our daughter/ sister married to a family asking dowry. That’s insulting in today’s day an age. Trust me if some one was to ask our family for dowry we would KICK BUTT, please don’t insult us, let alone give our daughter to such a family.
Also I cant believe that Amit’s Sister (Nidhi) is stating that she had no idea of these issues when RINKU CALLED HER UP COUPLE OF WEEKS ago asking for help. Anyways lets start with this first, and if I see this going in the way of being insulting or I receive stupid comments, I guess its the last you are hearing from me and the Family. I do also want to point out that we plan to do something social about women who are living a married life similar to that of Rinku and suffering. So lets start with this, and please be polite in your questions as this is my Dear Beloved Sister you will be talking about, getting nasty with someone is an easy trait, being polite is tough, so tread the road of being humble and polite with your questions. The letter begins:
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Rinku as I knew her
I met Rinku around June last year. We started meeting up on a regular basis and soon became very close friends. Meeting each other on a more or less daily basis we soon started confiding everything about our lives in each other.
She had already started to have problems in her marriage with Amit by then. Rinku was beautiful, confident, an out and out extrovert and doing excellently in her career. She was a warm, vivacious and ever optimistic person, very caring and affectionate by nature. Amit was an introvert, bordering on being chauvinistic and egoistical by nature. They never had major fights but had minor disagreements on a regular basis, mostly sparked by their completely contrasting personalities. Rinku being a strong independent woman had her viewpoint about things which irked him because he probably was hoping for a wife who while being great arm candy when he socialized would be more submissive at home and accept his decisions on house, car and other decisions of everyday life etc. without questioning him or giving her opinion on it.
It was one day when she had taken him with her to her official party that they ended up disagreeing on something and he left her stranded at the party late in the night and went off in their car, refusing to take her home with him. It was at this time that she was crying and wondering what to do next that her colleague came forward and offered to drop her home. In her state of distress she confided in him about her marital problems and the fact that all was not well with her marriage. Since that day he became her friend and confidant in office, who was there to give her a shoulder to cry on when things went wrong which was happening on a more or less regular basis. Having come to Bangalore after her marriage, she had no close friends in the city who she could confide in and she needed to speak to someone to clear her mind and decide how to take things forward. Till her last day, he remained that friend and confidant. There NEVER was a question of him being anything else. The rapport they shared was one of strong friendship and sympathy for her plight. His parents were any case looking out for a suitable match for him and he was supposed to get married by July this year. She would talk to him about her troubles and he in turn would advise her and also tell her all about the prospective marriage candidates he was being shown and ask her opinion on them, whether they sounded promising and should he go ahead and say yes to any. If that fight had not taken place in front of her colleague, she would never have started confiding in him in the first place.
On Amit’s birthday, Rinku planned flowers, cake and gifts at midnight and took him to out to dinner the next day. Ten minutes before midnight on her birthday he got into an argument with her about her dressing style. He criticized her wardrobe very rudely and then refused to apologise or make up with her when she started crying. They went o bed fighting and he did not plan anything for her the next morning either. After her work in the evening, she begged him to forget the fight and join her for dinner at a restaurant. He came in a very aloof manner and fought with her again while leaving the restaurant.
Rinku always believed in talking things out in case of an argument and moving on from there whereas Amit would just stop talking for several days in a row. This made her very unhappy. She would always be the first person to go ahead and make up with him after a fight even when she wasn’t at fault as she believed that with just two people living in a house, it was extremely unpleasant to live together day after day without talking.
During one such fight, Amit got a phone call. It was from some friend he had not heard from in sometime. He started talking to him ignoring Rinku who was in the middle of a heated discussion with him. When she asked him to at least resolve matters with her first without callously moving on to other things he got upset that his friend might have overheard and came forward and slapped her across her face. He NEVER apologized for that act either then or later.
During their numerous fights, NEVER did he bring up his suspicions of an extramarital affair at any point of time. Being basically of a suspicious and possessive nature, he sometimes used to check Rinku’s messages behind her back. She had come to realize this and had told him that if any point he wanted to know who she was communicating with, he just had to ask her. She requested him to not go behind her back but see her cell if he needed to in front of her. She wanted to be treated with the same trust and space she gave him.
Similarly, one day she mentioned how Amit was aware of all her investments, bank accounts etc. but had never told her about his. He found Rinku inquisitive when she asked such questions but all Rinku wanted was an open and honest marriage based on communication and trust.
In December last year they went to Mumbai to visit Rinku’s parents. Though they had planned this trip several months in advance, Amit sulked about going as he wanted to go to Delhi to his parents (which they were doing in January anyways). While there, he walked out from the room rudely once when Rinku’s mother was talking to him, slamming the door behind him just because he was in a bad mood. He also made last minute plans to meet his friends there without telling Rinku who he was meeting and how long he would be out, even when he knew that she had made plans for the two of them with her parents and relatives for that same time. One of Rinku’s biggest grievances with him was that he did not give her parents and family the same kind of respect and understanding that he wanted her to show his parents and this was always a point of conflict between them. Two days after returning to Bangalore, he suddenly stopped talking to her altogether though they hadn’t fought recently. After five days of silence with her pleading with him everyday during this time to tell her what was wrong, he said that he was not sure and he had to figure out some things first. He never gave his reasons even later when things went back to normal gradually and she was left wondering about his sudden spurts of silence.
Another point of conflict was that he did not give importance to her career and expected her to move with him out of Bangalore at the drop of a hat if he changed jobs; without even consulting her first about it. She was doing very well in her job and expected his support as far as her career went as she was sharing all household and other expenses with him including those for the new flat they had bought and furnished together.
Early February she decided to see a marriage counselor as a last resort to save her marriage as she had become completely drained from their daily fights about minor everyday things always followed by days of silence from his side. She was hoping that at least in front of the counselor he would open up enough to tell her his issues with her so they could talk things out.
I know for a fact that at the marriage counselor’s, different issues mentioned above were brought forth by him but there was not even a passing mention of him suspecting an extramarital affair. If it was preying on his mind to the point that he murdered her for it, how is it that he did not feel the need to even mention it once in front of the counselor? They visited the counselor on a Saturday evening. They were then asked to come back the next weekend and in the meantime advised to go out for lunches, dinners, movies etc. where they could just hang out and have fun without discussing any of their differences.
Saturday he didn’t speak to her, neither on Sunday even though she suggested several trips outside. Sunday night he invited her to the bedroom and when she refused on grounds of the fact that if there was no emotional bond between them then she couldn’t resort to physical intimacy, he got extremely upset and asked for a divorce. By then she had become completely disillusioned as she felt that her requirement in his life was not for companionship but for cooking and giving him company in bed and thus readily agreed.
The next day she went to the Gurudwara after work and silently cried there for everything that had gone wrong. When she went home that night, he told her that he had behaved impulsively the previous night and asked her to reconsider the divorce. She wanted to save the marriage if possible and agreed. She had by then told her parents about her marital problems and decided to go for a few days to them to personally let them know that she was planning to work on it as she knew how worried they would be about her. During the 5 days she was there, Amit neither called nor messaged though he knew that she had gone through problems at the airport with her visa etc. She had a difficult time trying to get in touch with him and he finally responded to her calls. They spoke only twice during her time there.
She came back to Bangalore with the intention of working on her marriage but though he had promised to be more communicative and make an effort from his side too, within few weeks she realized that they were back to their daily arguments and there wasn’t much change in his attitude. She carried on nevertheless till about 2 weeks before her death when she finally realized that the best thing for them both would be to move on instead of compromising on their happiness on a daily basis. She told him that it would be best to separate and he agreed. Amit told her that he was looking at job options overseas and would probably move abroad in a few months time. It was then that she requested him to move out of their present house to their Sarjapur flat as it would be closer to his workplace. She wanted to continue living there as being fairly new to the city and having to stay alone thereon she wanted to be in a locality she had become familiar with and also as she knew she could go to the landlord in times of trouble as she was on very good terms with his family and they were extremely helpful people.
One of the things she mentioned 3 days before her death was ‘After all when you have lived with someone for one and a half years and that too someone you have loved, there is a bond that forms that can’t go just because of disagreements. I know if I have decided to get out, I should do it soon but I’ve been dragging it and am still confused about my decision as I can’t make myself hate him. I still care about him…” Till he decided to move out of that house, she also continued staying with him as she felt that with both of them working, they could discuss how to take the divorce forward only when they met in the evenings. At the same time, she said that since she had to cook dinner for herself anyways, she could also take care of his food at least as long as they were still living together as it would be inconvenient for him to eat out everyday.
There was NEVER any question of an affair and she trusted him blindly and so continued living with him even after they had decided to separate. He took advantage of this blind trust and made her pay with her life for something she didn’t ever do. Amit not only cold bloodedly killed her but also maligned her even in death!!! As one of her closest friends, I want to make it clear to everyone that Rinku cared about Amit till the last day. He was the ONLY man she loved. Being an independent woman of the 21st century, she decided to opt out of a bad marriage but ONLY because they were not getting along together… NOT FOR ANY OTHER REASON!!!!
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