Bengaluru:

The 34-year-old techie who died by suicide at his home in Bengaluru had been planning his death for months and had prepared a detailed checklist of everything he needed to do in the days leading up to it, ticking off every task once it was done. A printout of the checklist was pasted on the wall of his Bengaluru home, right next to another printed paper with the words ‘Justice is due’. 

Atul Subhash, who hanged himself on Monday, left behind a 24-page suicide note and recorded a nearly 90-minute long video in which he alleges that his wife and her relatives had filed a slew of false cases against him and his family and were trying to get him to pay Rs 2 lakh a month as maintenance for her and the couple’s four-year-old son. Subhash, who is originally from Bihar, also levelled allegations against a judge in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur, where his in-laws live and some of his cases were being heard, claiming that she had demanded Rs 5 lakh from him to settle them. He also wrote a letter to the President, criticising the criminal justice system and highlighting a rising trend of false cases being filed against men by their estranged wives. 

The checklist prepared by Subhash was divided into three parts – ‘Before last day’, ‘Last day’ and ‘Execute last moment’ – and included items like removing his phone fingerprint and face recognition, presumably so that it could be accessed by others after he was dead; leaving his car, bike and room keys on the fridge; and completing all his office work and submitting his office laptop and charger.

While the list has a column for ticking off the tasks in the ‘Last day’ and ‘Execute last moment’ sections, it has ‘Done’ printed against the items in the ‘Before last day’ section, indicating that these had already been completed before the list was printed out. These included securing his finances, finishing office tasks and legal preparations, compiling all communications, and backing up data and “creating redundancies”.

In the ‘Last day’ section, the techie, who works in Artificial Intelligence according to his suicide note, had another task related to creating a local data backup as a redundancy. The other items included removing the fingerprint from his phone, uploading his scanned suicide note, clearing all payments, uploading his video suicide note and submitting his laptop, charger and ID card at his office. 

On the top of the list on his ‘Execute Last Moment’ section was having a bath, followed by keeping his car, bike and room keys on the fridge and the suicide note on the table. The focus on the car keys was also evident from the police complaint filed by Subhash’s brother, Bikas Kumar, who said the techie had sent him several messages saying goodbye and sharing the Google Maps location of his car. The other items on the list included sending messages to his lawyers and family and sending mails to the High Court and Supreme Court – after checking attachments – in which he had complained about the judge assigned to his case, who allegedly took bribes. 

‘Took Months’

The fact that this list was carefully planned was also reflected in Subhash’s suicide note, in which he mentions that it took him months to ensure that all his “pending responsibilities” were completed. 

“It took me a few months to make sure that I complete my pending responsibilities I had towards my family and finish my work commitments etc. Also a lot of government office work is slow, that also led to this delay in suicide. I hope this delay will not go against me and will not help harassers and extorters of me and my family,” the techie wrote.  

“The more | work hard and become better at my work, the more l and my family will be harassed and extorted and the whole legal system will encourage and help my harassers… Now, with me gone, there won’t be any money and there won’t be any reason to harass my old parents and my brother. I may have destroyed my body but it has saved everything I believe in,” he said in another part of the note. 

Instigation?

In his suicide note, Subhash said his wife and her family’s cases against him included one under the Dowry Prohibition Act and others pertaining to sections like cruelty against a woman. He said when he had pointed out to the judge at one point that men are dying by suicide because of false cases, his wife had asked him why he wasn’t doing so. He claimed the judge had also laughed at this while ordering his wife to leave the room and then his mother-in-law had asked why he had not died by suicide yet. 

Subhash said when he had asked his mother-in-law how she and her daughter would get money when he was gone, she said she would get it from his parents and ensure that his family kept doing the rounds of courts for life. 

“It seems that Devi Saraswati herself made my mother in law disclose her plans and the solution of all the problems too. This incident along with instigation to commit suicide from my wife and the face of the laughing judge mocking my helplessness has rendered my faith in legal system destroyed and has prompted my action of committing suicide (sic),” he wrote.

The police have registered an abutment of suicide case against Subhash’s wife and some members of his family, according to news agency PTI. 

New Delhi:

Train operations came to a halt for almost an hour after a fight broke out between two monkeys at the Samastipur Junction railway station in Bihar.

Two monkeys were fighting over a banana near platform number 4, when one of them threw a rubber-like object at the other. The object came in contact with an overhead wire and caused a short-circuit. The wire then broke and fell on the bogie of a train, bringing trains to a halt.

The railway station’s electrical department began repairs of the wire. However, the Bihar Sampark Kranti standing on platform number 4 got delayed by about 15 minutes. Other trains also got delayed, causing inconvenience to passengers. 

Meanwhile, the monkeys ran off in the direction of Barauni railway station. This is the latest among a string of incidents that point to the monkey menace prevailing at the Samastipur railway station. Earlier, passengers have been injured by monkeys, which were later caught by the forest department.

A man and a woman on a bike stopped on the side of the road when two men on a motorcycle came from the opposite direction, slowed the vehicle, snatched a bag from the woman’s hand and fled. The bag had Rs 1 lakh cash which the woman had just withdrawn from a bank in Bihar’s Samastipur. The daylight robbery, which occurred today, was captured on a surveillance camera which showed the bikers snatching the bag.

The woman, Durga Kumari, gets down from the bike and runs after them but within seconds, the thieves sped away. Meanwhile, the man who was accompanying the woman turns around and starts running toward them but to no avail.

The incident took place near the Jagadamba Ply Factory on the Musarigharari-Patori road in Bihar’s Samastipur. The woman was returning after withdrawing money from an SBI branch.

The victim said, “We went to the bank to withdraw and the bag had approximately Rs 1 lakh, a mobile phone worth Rs 25,000, ATM cards and other documents. We stopped at the spot for a minute because of some work. The thieves came from the front snatched the bag from me and fled.”

A police case has been registered and the matter is under investigation.

– with inputs from Avinash Kumar
 

Patna:

Putting their lives at risk to avoid inconvenience to the passengers on their train as well as the rakes behind them, two loco pilots carried out a complex repair on the engine while one of them was practically dangling off the side of a bridge in Uttar Pradesh. 

The Narkatiaganj Gorakhpur Passenger train was trundling along on Friday when a sudden air pressure leak from an unloader valve in the locomotive caused it to stop. The engine and a few coaches were atop a bridge and, knowing that it would take time for technicians to arrive and fix the problem, the loco pilot and assistant loco pilot clambered down to check for themselves.

A video, which is now going viral, shows one of the loco pilots crawling under the engine while another balances himself dangerously close to the edge on the bottom ledge of the bridge. He can be seen below the sleepers placed under the tracks, holding on to areas around them to keep from falling off.

The two daredevils managed to solve the problem between them by plugging the air pressure leak and their courage and ingenuity have also been applauded by the railways. The Samastipur Divisional Railway Manager, Vinay Srivastava, has announced a reward of Rs 10,000 for both loco pilots. 

An official said the place where this happened is bridge number 382, between Balmikinagar and Paniyava.