Wife of Kingfisher employee commits suicide over his salary problems

The wife of an employee of the troubled Kingfisher Airlines committed suicide around 1:30 pm this afternoon. The suicide note found in her south-west Delhi home said that her husband had not been paid for the last six months. She is also understood to be battling depression. She was found hanging from the ceiling and rushed to a local hospital, but didn’t survive.

Sushmita Chakrabarty, 45, wrote a suicide note in Bengali, which says: “My husband and son are very caring and I love them. My husband works with Kingfisher where they have not paid him salary for the last six months. We are in acute financial crisis and so I am committing suicide”.

Sushmita’s husband, Manas Chakraborty, is an engineer with Kingfisher Airlines; all 270 of the debt-ridden company’s engineers have been on strike since Sunday protesting against non-payment of salaries. The company announced a partial lockdown on Monday and has flown no flight since then.

The lockdown is most likely to be extended, since without engineers signing off on each flight for safety, the airline can’t put any aircraft in the air.

Following the news of Mrs Charkrabarty’s suicide, Kingfisher engineers in Mumbai have called for a protest gathering at the airport this evening.