My brain is my enemy, writes news anchor as she jumps to death

A newsreader of a popular Telugu television channel committed suicide by jumping off the fifth-floor terrace of her apartment in Hyderabad a couple of hours after she returned from work on Sunday night, police said.

Venkannagari Radhika Reddy (36), who anchored 9 pm news bulletin on the channel, returned to her flat on the second floor of Srivila Apartments at Moosapet at around 10.40 pm.

“She left her bag in the flat and went straightaway to the terrace of the five-storeyed apartment and jumped from there. She died on the spot due to multiple injuries to her head and limbs,” Kukatpalli assistant police commissioner Bhujanga Rao said.

The police recovered a suicide note in Radhika’s bag, in which she said she was committing suicide out of depression and nobody was responsible for her death. “My brain is my enemy,” she said in the suicide note.

According to her colleagues, Radhika got divorced from her husband six months ago and had been staying with her parents and sister.

“She has a 14-year old son who has been suffering from autism. But she never talked about her family problems in the office and was always jovial. She was an efficient worker and anchored several programmes, particularly devotional programmes,” one of the news correspondents of the channel said on condition of anonymity.

He said Radhika had read her last news bulletin normally, without showing any kind of emotion. “We never expected that she would take such an extreme step,” he said.

The Kukatpalli police a registered a case of suspicious death and took up the investigation.

HYDERABAD: ACCORDING TO HER COLLEAGUES, RADHIKA GOT DIVORCED FROM HER HUSBAND SIX MONTHS AGO