Eyeing compensation to secure kids’ future, mom throws self before bus

COIMBATORE: Assuming that her death would fetch compensation that would help meet her children’s education and marriage expenses, a 39-year-old woman sanitary worker died by suicide by throwing herself before a moving bus.

Though the incident happened on June 28, the reason for Pappathi, a temporary conservancy worker at the Salem Collector office, to take the extreme step came out only after a police probe. A single-mother for the past 18 years, she was the sole breadwinner of the family comprising her son, an architecture diploma student, and daughter who is pursuing final-year engineering.

At the collectorate, she met a person who received accident victim relief fund and got to know that the kin of bus accident victims would be compensated, said an official attached to Salem Town police station, adding that the woman was worried about getting her daughter married and arranging son’s college fees.

Pappathi’s children had rejected monetary aid from philanthropists, believing that their mother died by accident, he said.

“Based on reports, when the tahsildar held an enquiry with the family members on Tuesday, the son and daughter claimed it to be an accident, as their mother did not have suicidal thoughts and also never told them anything about financial constraints,” said Salem RDO D Ambayiranathan.