Didn’t know they were friends, say parents of teens
The image of his 17-year-old son hanging from a ceiling fan in a hotel room in Dwarka will probably haunt this father for the rest of his life. He will forever rue the day that his son allegedly decided to take his own life, along with the 18-yearold girl, without even trying to speak to his parents first.
“If he had gotten into any kind of trouble he should have told us. If he wanted anything he should have told us. Maybe even given us an ultimatum that if we did not agree to his wishes, he would do something like this. I have never denied him anything. I was not a very strict or ‘disciplinarian’ father. Kids need to talk to their parents,” said the father of the teenage boy, who had committed suicide along with his female friend in an OYO room in Dwarka on Friday.
A day after the two teenagers were found hanging from the ceiling fan in a hotel, police said they are yet to find out why the two committed suicide. “We do not suspect foul play in the matter as the couple had checked into the room and the room was locked from inside. The parents too have not alleged foul play. We still do not know why they took such a step. We will now question their friends,” DCP southwest, Surendra Kumar said.
An investigating officer said that the girl’s parents asked the police to return her body after the autopsy and denied they had any knowledge about the boy. HT visited her family at their west Delhi home but they refused to comment. Police did not recover a suicide note.
The families seem to be just as perplexed by the incident.
“Sometimes when he used to go to the institute (where he took coaching for his IIT entrance exams), he used to return home late. I used to ask him about his whereabouts but I did not have any knowledge about this girl,” the father said.
He can still recount the last time he saw his son alive on Thursday afternoon, when he said he was leaving for a “demo class” in computer science, and he would be late.
“By 7pm, I got a call from him, saying that his friend was unwell and he was going to meet him. The call was not very clear. I insisted that he come back home, as it was already late. Then at around 9pm, I got multiple messages from his phone within a span of about two minutes. In all of them, he said ‘I will come home tomorrow.’ In the last one he also added, ‘Don’t worry’,” he said.
The father claims he tried calling him and even asked his friends to try and get in touch with him, but his phone was switched off. It was only the next day, when the cops contacted him, he found out about his son’s death. “When I reached the hotel, my wife and father were already there, but the cops had not told them anything. They were waiting for me, and they took me to the room. I saw my son and the girl hanging from the ceiling fan of the hotel,” he said.