Can't part with my grandson', 65-year old kills son's child and commits suicide

Pune: In a strange but tragic case, a 65-year-old man tired of a court case against him, jumped to his death from a building in Pune after allegedly killing his 10-year-old grandson because he loved him a lot and could not bear to part with him.

Neighbours and family claimed that Sudhir Dagdumal Shah and his young grandson Jinay were inseparable and were always seen together. Shah almost took complete care of the child and would drop and pick him up from the bus stop for school every day. Shah would also go out on most evenings with Jinay and keep a watchful eye for his grandson when he played.

On the morning of March 19, Shah took a drastic step to end his life and also took what he claims was a ‘hard decision’ to snuff 10-year-old Jinay’s life and ‘take him along’ with him. In his suicide note he wrote that he loved the boy too much to part with him.

According to a report, Shah had been embroiled in a bitter court battle with a relative over an electronics shop the family owned in Shirur, some 60 kms away from Pune. Shah’s family shifted to Pune by winding up the business but found himself locked in a court battle with the relative who ran the shop along with him.

In his suicide note, he allegedly claimed that he was mentally disturbed and did not want to be entangled in the court case anymore.

“I will live for next 10 to 15 years. Instead of going to the court all these years, I prefer to die and get rid of this matter forever… I am taking Jinay along with me. I cannot go without Jinay. I have been taking his care. So I have taken the hard decision to take him along,” he wrote in the suicide note.

According to his son Paresh, everything seemed normal on the night of March 18 when he had returned home at 11 pm. He retired to his bedroom with his wife and Jinay went to sleep with his grandfather in the hall.

Police said that Shah strangled Jinay at around 1.30 am and then took his body outside the flat and lay it on the staircase. He then committed suicide by jumping from the seventh floor of the building.

It was security guards and some residents who spotted the bodies of the two and rushed to the Shah residence to inform Paresh. They called the police at 4.30 am in the morning to report the crime.

The police conducted a search in the house and found the note written by Shah in which he said no body should be held responsible for the deaths. They also found another suicide note written by him in December but suspect that he did not execute his plan because of a family function.

Most of the neighbours gave positive feedback to the police about the Shah family and said that all the members seemed happy and they never saw anybody fight.

Based on their probe so far, police believe that there is little doubt over the sequence of events and that it was Shah who killed Jinay and himself.

Senior inspector Rajendra Mokashi said they have ruled out other theories and the postmortem reports also corroborated with their findings.