PUNE: A 28-year-old Ayurveda practitioner was found hanging on Thursday morning from a shower rod in the washroom of his house at lane number 2 of Azadnagar in Wanowrie barely hours after his wife — a homoeopath — was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the house around 5.15pm on Wednesday.
Police said the couple — Nikhil Dattatreya Shendkar and Ankita (25) — had a verbal tiff on Wednesday evening over phone on handling a patient at the clinic in their residential building while Nikhil was returning home from his other clinic at Kasurdi in Yavat. After reaching home, he found Ankita hanging from a ceiling fan. She used a dupatta to hang herself.
On Thursday morning, Nikhil went for a bath and did not come out of the washroom for quite some time. His family members got worried and broke the bathroom door. They found Nikhil hanging from the shower rod, using another dupatta.
Senior inspector Deepak Lagad of the Wanowrie police said, “Ankita’s preliminary post-mortem report stated the cause as ‘death due to hanging’. Nikhil’s report has mentioned ‘asphyxia due to hanging’. Viscera has been preserved for chemical analysis in either case. We have registered accidental death cases and will record statements of the couple’s parents, relatives, friends and neighbours.”
Deputy commissioner of police (Zone V) Namrata Patil told TOI, “Nikhil’s family members handed us a note, purportedly written by him, stating that nobody should be held responsible for his death. It stated he had no idea about why Ankita ended her life. In the note, Nikhil apologised to his parents and inlaws for the incident.”
Nikhil’s uncle, Ramdas Shendkar, told TOI, “After Ankita’s death last (Wednesday) evening, Nikhil told us that he had called her around 4pm requesting her to attend a patient suffering from mental illness. But Ankita was not willing to attend the patient as she felt the patient was argumentative by nature. We came to know about Ankita’s death only after Nikhil returned home around 5.15pm. We don’t know what went wrong between them.”
Nikhil’s maternal uncle, Dhanaji Dimble, said, “Ankita was from Uruli Kanchan and got married to Nikhil in December 2019. The couple was jointly running the clinic and would counsel patients testing positive for Covid-19. We never thought a happy married couple would end their lives in such a way.”
Nikhil and Ankita stayed on the third floor of a groundplus-three storied independent house built by Nikhil’s father on five-guntha land in Azadnagar. Nikhil’s family has been residing there for the last 35 years. His parents, brother and sister — both dentists, stay on the ground floor.
Lagad said, “When the police reached their house, Nikhil told us about the tiff and that she was neither responding to his calls nor opening the door. He broke into the room and found her hanging. He removed her body and tried to resuscitate her by giving CPR, but in vain. He then informed the police, who took the body to the Sassoon General Hospital, where doctors declared her dead.”
