Indian Space Centre rocked by three suicides in a week

Hyderabad: The high security Indian Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh has been rocked by three suicides in a week.

While two of them were security personnel, another was the wife of one of them, police said.

In the latest incident on Wednesday, Priya Singh (27) ended her life just 24 hours after her husband Vikas Singh shot himself with a service weapon at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre of Indian Space Research Organisation. The centre is the facility from where ISRO launches Indian and foreign satellites.

The police have moved the bodies of the husband and wife to the local government hospital for autopsy and police have registered a case of suicide.

Vikas Singh (30), a sub-inspector of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), deployed at the Space Centre ended his life by shooting himself in the head with his revolver.

He was recently transferred from Mumbai to Sriharikota, CISF sources said.

On hearing about the incident, his wife Priya Singh along with his brother and three children reached the Space Centre from home state Uttar Pradesh.

She was uncontrollable with grief after seeing the body of her husband. The family was accommodated at an official guest house in the Space Centre where they spent Tuesday night. CISF officials questioned the wife about possible reasons behind Vikas Singh’s suicide but she could not say much.

The family woke up to another tragedy on Wednesday when they found Priya hanging from a ceiling fan. They alerted the security persons who brought down the body.

The reasons of the twin suicides were unknown.

According to the police, Vikas Singh belonged to the 2015 batch and after training he was deployed at the Bhabha Atomic Centre on security duty. He had faced disciplinary action while in Mumbai and was transferred to Space Centre in November last.

The couple is survived by two minor daughters and a son.

A couple of days before Vikas Singh’s suicide, another constable Cintamani also committed suicide at the Space Centre by hanging himself from a tree.

Chintamani belonged to Chhattisgarh state and had re-joined duty on January 10 after long leave. Police are yet to ascertain the reason for his suicide.