Unable to Pay Mother's Medical Bills, Man Slits Her Throat

A 53-year-old man was arrested in the Indian city of Mumbai on Friday for murdering his mother as he was unable to manage her rising medical expenses.

Yogesh Shenoy tried three times before he was successful. First gave his 80-year-old mother an overdose of sleeping pills, then her smothered her with a pillow, and finally slit her throat with a paper cutter. He then sat next to her body for over seven hours before turning himself to the police the following morning.

Shenoy asked his mother to stay with him and his wife following the death of his brother and father. However, he and his wife soon started fighting and his wife left him. Frustrated and depressed, Shenoy gave up his job, causing his finances to deteriorate. He started having frequent fights with his mother too. On Thursday, they had another altercation about her rising medical expenditure, after which he began plotting his mother's murder to get “rid” of the problem.

“The murder took place because of the constant fights with his mother and due to her medical bills, which he was unable to manage,” the Hindustan Times reported senior police inspector Pandit Thakare as saying.

Post the fight, he bought two packets of 15 sleeping pills each, crushed them, mixed the powder in a glass of milk and served it to his mother.

“Around 1.30 a.m. local time Friday (3.30 p.m. EST Thursday), he got up to check on his mother. He found that he was breathing. Frustrated, he tried to smother her with a pillow, but she kept struggling and did not succumb,” a police officer said, adding that Shenoy then picked up a paper cutter and slit her throat, the Times Of India reported.

The following morning, he called the police control room to turn himself in. A police team reached the spot and found him sitting next to the body of his mother.

"We have arrested him from the spot and booked him for murder. The murder weapon has been recovered," Thakare said, the Mid Day reported.

The body was sent for an autopsy. Shenoy's neighbors said they remember the mother and son as devoted to one another.

“They have been my tenants for decades now. They did not interact much with anyone in the neighbourhood,” Shenoy’s landlord Darshana Ghone said.

In a similar incident in September, a British man admitted to slitting his grandmother’s throat as he could no longer see her suffering from dementia.

“I don’t want her to suffer any more and she’s not in pain any more. I just wanted to get that done for ages, to be honest with you mate. I just can’t take it anymore. She doesn’t know who anyone is, she’s in agony. I killed her, I just cut her throat,” Antony Jennings had told the police.