“Please, live for your mother’s sake…” was what the village sarpanch told an 18-year-old man who stood on the edge of a hill in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar on Friday, in a desperate plea to bring him away from the edge.
Police officers at the scene also tried to reason with the young man, but their efforts, like everyone else’s, did not succeed. The teenager’s father had been appealing to his son from below for much of the ordeal but climbed up to the hilltop in the last 15 to 20 minutes as the situation grew more desperate.
The two lost their balance and fell. For nearly three hours, the sarpanch, along with the boy’s parents and other villagers, tried everything to talk him down. Words of comfort. Promises of getting him whatever he wants. Nothing worked. The horror ended with the deaths of all three members of the family . Moments later, his mother, watching in panic, also fell from the hill. All three members of the family died.
At around 1 pm, as the teenager continued moving close to the edge, his father attempted to pull him back.
