Baleshwar: The mystery surrounding the suspicious death of a 34-year-old engineer, Rashmiranjan Sethi, in Odisha’s Baleshwar district has deepened following the recovery of a suicide note.
According to sources, the purported note states that Sethi took his own life and that no one was responsible for his death. However, use of two different ink colours, specifically, the signatures and dates being written in a different pen than the body of the text, has raised suspicions regarding its authenticity. Police have sent the note for forensic examination to verify whether the handwriting genuinely belongs to the deceased or if it was forged to mislead the investigation.
Meanwhile, Sethi’s family has strongly rejected the suicide theory, alleging foul play. They have filed a complaint at Sahadevkhunta police station, accusing his wife, Rashmi Rekha, and a male friend, who is also an engineer working under the National Health Mission (NHM) in Baleshwar, of murdering him.
The incident took place when Sethi, a native of Jagatsinghpur district who worked as an engineer in Kataka, travelled to Baleshwar on the night of July 16 to surprise his wife on her birthday. His wife, a government engineer posted in Baleshwar, told police that she found him from the ceiling of the house. He was taken to the the District Headquarters Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
According to the family, the couple had been married for three years, but their relationship had been strained by frequent disputes over Rashmi Rekha’s alleged extramarital affair. They started living separately after Sethi was allegedly assaulted and threatened by his wife and her male associate. Relatives, who examined the body, noted physical signs of a struggle, pointing out multiple injury marks on the victim’s neck and severe swelling near his ear, leading tos suspicion that he was murdered before the scene was staged to look like a suicide.
Police have questioned Sethi’s wife though her responses have reportedly been unsatisfactory. Investigation is underway from both angles, potential murder as alleged by the family, and abetment to suicide, pending key postmortem findings on the ligature marks and forensic analysis of the dual-ink note.
