Mother Kills Self Over Minor Daughter's Cell Phone Addiction

A 34-year-old Indian mother killed herself reportedly over her minor daughter’s cell phone addiction.

Tamilarasi was found hanging from the ceiling on her saree at her home in Manimangalam near Padappai of Chennai on Tuesday, June 29.

The deceased woman reportedly had issues with her 15-year-old daughter’s cell phone addiction. She wanted the girl to reduce her cell phone usage and concentrate on her studies. The mother and daughter often got into arguments over the same.

On Tuesday evening, the girl, identified as Geetha, got into a heated argument with her mother. Following the tiff, the girl stopped talking to her mother.

In the night, Tamilarasi called Geetha to have dinner but she refused to talk or eat. The heartbroken mother went to her room and locked the door.

The girl and her younger sister knocked on the door after their mother did not come out for a long time. Even after repeated attempts, the girls got no response. As their father, Sobanraj was not home at that time, the girls rushed to their neighbors home and alerted them.

The neighbors came to the home and broke open the door to find Tamilarasi hanging from the ceiling on her saree.

Manimangalam police officers responded to the home after the neighbors alerted them. Responding officers retrieved the woman’s body and sent it to the Chrompet General Hospital for an autopsy.

The police have registered a case and an investigation is ongoing.

In a similar but unrelated incident, the British-born US software mogul John McAfee took his own life in a Barcelona jail on Wednesday, after the Spanish high court authorized his extradition to the US on tax evasion charges.

The prison medical personnel and guards performed life-saving procedures after finding McAfee unresponsive inside his cell but were not successful at bringing him back to life.

A statement from the Catalonia regional government Justice Department, which manages prisons there, said that "everything indicates" that McAfee could have killed himself.

The 75-year-old hanged himself as his nine months in jail brought him to despair, his lawyer, Javier Villalba, said.