Salem: Suicide bid by 5 of family causes flutter

Salem: In a sordid suicide attempt, five members of a family who came to give a petition to the Salem district collector here on Monday on a long-pending domestic issue, made a bid to burn themselves at the collectorate, but were promptly saved by the police personnel present there.

In what could have been another gory tragedy like the one that happened earlier in the day at the Tirunelveli collectorate, 60-year-old Kamala of Chinnseeragapadi village near Salem, her two sons and two daughter-in-laws, waiting to give a petition to the collector at the grievances day meet, suddenly doused themselves with kerosene they had brought in a can and tried to set themselves on fire.

Fortunately, an alert police contingent quickly snatched the kerosene can from the distressed family members and foiled their suicide attempt. All the five were taken to Salem Town police station for inquiry.

As the cops tried to find out what pushed them to this extreme step, Gopi, one of the sons of Kamala, said that they had been moving heaven and earth to get an electricity connection for a new house they had built on the first floor of an existing structure and had given an application to the local Electricity Board (EB) office at Veerapandi. However, one of their relatives, due to alleged prior enmity, had objected to the EB granting a new connection, ostensibly on the ground that the cable should not pass through agricultural land.

Gopi said despite several pleas to the local EB office, the authorities told the warring families to first settle their 'domestic squabble' before the EB could decide on giving the power connection.

Gopi said this squabble has been going on for the past five years and hence they decided to petition the district collector on the issue, as efforts to convince the EB officials to grant a power connection had been in vain.