Father kills two children, commits suicide

Ghaziabad, March 12 (IANS) After killing his son and a daughter, a man apparently burdened by poverty committed suicide here on Monday night, police said on Tuesday.The tragedy occurred in Noor Nagar area in Ghaziabad whose resident Sundar Pal (42) ran a 'dhaba' at Manali in Himachal Pradesh. He had returned to live with his father, a retired gardner from the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, as the roadside eatery was not giving him profits. On Monday night, his wife Sashi and their son Naman went to sleep in a first floor bedroom. Sundar Pal and his other two children, Tushar (15) and daughter Mahi (12), remained in the ground floor room. Post midnight, when his father Bhagwan Singh came out to use the toilet, he saw Sundar Pal hanging from the ceiling fan of his bedroom. The two children lay dead on the bed. The police found a 15-page note in which he mentioned how he had suffered loss in business and how he had tried to compensate the loss by driving cabs. "It seems he administered some poison in the ice cream he gave to Tushar and Mahi. And after that he committed suicide by hanging," said Inspector Sanjay Pandey of Sihani Gate police station.
--IANS sps/mr/nir