Ernakulam: An online loan trap is behind the incident in which a couple killed two children and committed suicide in Kadmakudi. Relatives said that the deceased woman had borrowed money from an online loan app and when the repayment stopped, the online apps morphed the pictures and sent threatening messages. Nijo (39), his wife Shilpa (32) and their children Abel (7) and Aaron (5), a native of Kadamakudy, are the dead. After suffocating the two boys, the father and mother were hanging themselves.
The incident happened on Tuesday morning. The dead bodies were found on the upper floor of the ancestral house around 7:30 in the morning. The police received the suicide note indicating that there was huge financial burden and no one was helping. Relatives were made to believe that Shilpa was going to Italy yesterday. But after calling Nijo, who is a construction worker and an artist, on the phone and could not be reached, the friend searched the house. This time, Nijo was seen hanging from the fan in the hall and Shilpa from the hook on the ceiling.
Relatives informed Police that Shilpa had taken a loan of 9000 rupees from the online app and asked them to pay it back as soon as possible. Some morphed pictures of Shilpa were also sent by online app threatening that they would spread the pictures widely if the money was not returned. The investigation is going on regarding this.
After the inquest, the Varapuzha police shifted the dead bodies to Kalamasery Medical College for post-mortem. The cremation took place this morning at St. Augustine’s Church Cemetery, Kadamakudy.
Nijo and Shilpa got married ten years ago. Then he stayed in the family house. But after his brother Tijo got married, they both moved upstairs on their mother’s advice. A loan was taken to make the upper floor habitable. To settle this debt in 2018, Shilpa sold gold and took a loan to go to Italy and paid more than five lakh rupees to a recruiting agency in Kodungallur. Covid spread when all the visa procedures were completed. With that, the trip was stopped and caused a big crisis.
Shilpa was working at the press in Vadutala for a while. After trusting the agent, Shilpa returned to Italy a month ago. But due to the lack of some documents, the journey was interrupted in Abu Dhabi and returned. The documents were corrected but the agent did not intervene much. This left Nijo and Shilpa exhausted. Then last day, he told his relatives that he was going to Italy again and packed his clothes and other things in a box. Neighbors said they heard Nijo and Shilpa talking till 12 in the night. The statement given by the brother to the police was that they only had a debt of five lakh rupees.
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