New Delhi / DU teacher found dead on railway track, mom found hanging 30 minutes later

A 27-year-old adhoc assistant professor of Delhi University’s St Stephen’s College was found dead at the railway tracks near Sarai Rohilla station on Saturday afternoon. Around half-an-hour later, the man’s 55-year-old mother was found hanging at their flat in northwest Delhi’s Pitampura, the police said.

Police said the mother-son duo originally belonged to Kerala. They added that the duo was facing an abetment to suicide case, filed at a police station in Kerala reportedly by the family of the woman’s husband’s former wife. Police investigation has revealed that the woman’s husband had allegedly killed himself in December last year. Although, the mother-son duo had secured anticipatory bail in the case, they were depressed because of it, the police said.

Kottayam’s superintendent of police (SP) Hari Shankar, however, said that there was no case against the DU teacher and his mother in the district. “We have checked with the police station in Pambadi and found no case against them here,” he said, adding that he has informed the Delhi police about the same.

Investigators said they suspect the teacher, who taught at St Stephen’s College, may have killed his mother before taking his own life, as they found clothes stuffed in the woman’s mouth and her limbs tied.

Two knives and a four-page suicide note written in Malayalam were recovered from the second floor flat, where the woman’s body was found hanging in the bedroom.

The circumstances under which the woman’s body was discovered made the outer district police register a case of murder. The railway police on the other hand have initiated an inquiry into the son’s ‘suicide’.

Deputy commissioner of police (railways) Dinesh Kumar Gupta said that on Saturday around 1 pm, the railway police received information that a man had been run over by a train some 100 metres from Sarai Rohilla railway station.

“Our team reached the spot and found the man’s body into two pieces, with his severed head lying between the tracks. His mobile phone, wallet and a wristwatch was recovered from the spot. We established the man’s identity with the help of his driving licence,” said DCP Gupta.

The DCP said that while police personnel were at the incident spot, the man’s colleague called on his mobile phone and was informed about the recovery of the body. “The colleague told us that the man was a teacher in DU’s St Stephen’s College,” Gupta said. He added that investigators were unaware of the death of the teacher’s mother until his family friend visited his Pitampura flat some time later, where she was found hanging.

Additional deputy commissioner of police (outer) Rajender Singh Sagar said around 1.30pm, the Rani Bagh police received a call that a woman and her son who lived in Pitampura were untraceable and not responding to calls made by relatives and family friends.

A family friend then went to the flat to check on the two because they were reportedly depressed. When his repeated calls did not evoke any response, the friend alerted the apartment’s security guard and management authorities, who in turn called the police before visiting the flat.

“The main door was not locked. They went inside and found the woman hanging in a bedroom from the ceiling fan. The suicide note found there has mention of a criminal case the two were facing in Kerala,” said Sagar.

The bodies of the two were sent to separate government hospitals where the autopsies are likely to be conducted on Monday. The police have informed the man’s brother, who lives in Kerala, about the deaths. The brother has reportedly given the police some insight into the reason why the two were reportedly depressed .

St Stephen’s College principal, John Varghese, said, “The young man was an adhoc teacher at our college. On Saturday, he did not come to college and we got to know that he had committed suicide. The college administration was not aware of any previous FIRs against him. He had not spoken to any of his colleagues about it.”