Chennai: The Madras high court has acquitted a young engineer sentenced to life by the trial court for killing his five-year-old son and trying to hang himself out of depression caused by the death of his wife and setbacks that followed. Dr A P Mythili, senior resident in the psychiatry department of Kilpauk medical college hospital, told the court that after examining him, she had cautioned the hospital authorities to have strict vigil on him because he could kill himself or others without realizing the consequences of his acts as he suffered from ‘major depressive disorder’.
Accepting the doctor’s testimony in the court, the judges held that Steepen “is entitled for acquittal” as he was of unsound mind when he killed his son and tried to hang himself. However, he had recovered subsequently due to treatment in the hospital and hence his trial was in accordance with law, they said in their order on March 16, setting free Steepen who had undergone unimaginable misery since the car accident killed his pregnant wife and gruesomely injured him and his little son on October 22, 2008.
Till that day, the Steepens were a dream family. Coming from a poor family of farmers from a remote village near Vellore, Steepen had become an engineer and married his lady love Sangeetha. They had happily settled in Chennai where he had a good job. To quote from the order of the the HC bench, Steepen was living “a life full of joy and jubilation and would not have even imagined that a severe blow to his life was fast approaching to make a complete topsy turvy”.
That cruel twist happened when Steepen received a message on October 20, 2008, that his father had taken ill. He drove to his village along with his wife and son but had to rush back the following day when his office in Chennai summoned him for some urgent work. The car crashed into a roadside tree. While Sangeetha died on the spot, Steepen and the boy were admitted to Vellore Medical College Hospital with multiple fractures.
To cut short a long miserable story, Steepen lost his job as he became a cripple; his father-in-law took away most part of his money and wife’s jewels saying he spent money on her cremation; and living became a burden by each passing day. On July 8, 2009, he gave sleeping pills to his son, took some himself and went to his father-in-law’s house. He pushed himself into one of the rooms there and bolted from within, along with the kid. The mother-in-law, who was alone, called her husband and the neighbours. Police broke open the door to find the boy dead and Steepen on the floor with a portion of a tie around his neck. He had tried to hang himself from the fan and the tie had broken under his weight. Doctors at Royapettah Hospital saved the man from death, though not from his misery. It remains to be seen if the court verdict now would give this man a fresh lease of life, a new opportunity to rebuild life from the terrible ashes of the past.
