Depression 'led HIV duo to kill children'

Mumbai: Police on Saturday said depression drove an HIV-positive couple to poison their young children and commit suicide.

Deputy commissioner of police Rajkumar Vatkar says a relative found film distributor Ishwar Thevar and his wife hanging from a ceiling fan and their children dead in an adjoining room in an apartment in a Mumbai suburb earlier this week. He said yesterday the three children had been fed food laced with poison before the couple hung themselves. Police believe medical reports that their four-year-old daughter was also HIV-positive triggered the suicide.

HIV-positive people face discrimination in India, which has about 2.5 million people infected with the virus.