A day after a couple and their son were discovered dead in Vadodara, the husband, Pritesh Mistry, wrote a note describing their deaths as a “family suicide.” On Tuesday, police booked Mistry for allegedly strangling his wife and child before killing himself.
On Monday morning, Mistry, his wife Sneha, and their seven-year-old son Harshil were discovered dead in their rented apartment in the Waghodia road area.
Police said that Mistry was booked because the post-mortem report’s description of the injury marks on his wife and son suggested that he had killed them both before turning the gun on himself.
“There are injury marks described in the post-mortem report that indicates that Mistry indeed killed his wife and child before killing himself. We are probing the case to understand the sequence of events… It is likely that he first strangulated his wife and then smothered his son,” Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone III, Yashpal Jaganiya told to the sources.
In a lengthy suicide note left behind on his mobile phone, Mistry claimed that he was “entangled in a web of debt” and had even “sold off his two cars to repay some of the loans”.
In his suicide note, Mistry claimed that the decision to end their lives was taken jointly by Sneha and him and, therefore, the families “should not harbour grudges or hatred against each other”.
The suicide note also states that his family must “hire a lawyer and complaint to the police” in case any of the creditors “harass my relatives for the repayment of the loans”.
While there is widespread speculation that Mistry lost a lot of money in the stock market after investing loan money from various financial institutions, Jaganiya stated that the transactions would be revealed during the investigation. “We have asked various banks for information about Mistry’s financial transactions using his PAN and Aadhaar numbers… We’ll find out how much he owed to the lenders and whether he’s really paid off some debt after selling off his cars. We will also decide how to handle this situation of unpaid debts, Jaganiya said.
After Pritesh’s mother had arrived at the home at 10 am on Monday as instructed by Mistry in a text message the day before, the police had found the bodies of Pritesh, Sneha, and Harshil inside their rented apartment.
Mistry had written an apology to his mother on the wall of the bedroom where his mother discovered him hanged. He also wrote that the police could find a detailed suicide note that was saved on his mobile device.