Depressed over rape charges, man commits suicide

A 55-year-old executive director of an NGO committed suicide by jumping off a building here after becoming depressed when a girl accused him of rape, police said Wednesday.

Khurshid Anwar, who ran a non-governmental organisation, was found in a pool of blood outside his residential building in Vasant Kunj area in south Delhi. He lived alone on the second floor.

A labourer working in an under-construction building told police that he saw Anwar falling from the building.

He told his neighbours and they took Anwar to a hospital where doctors declared him dead.

Police said a three-page note was found in his diary, where Anwar said he was being targeted by the girl, a member of another NGO.

He also said he was upset with the allegation.

"I am upset about the way the girl is campaigning against me without any fault of mine, and maligning my 30 years of career and reputation," a police officer quoted the note as saying.

A former Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar, Anwar was living in the house for the past several years.

Police said a case of rape was registered against him Tuesday, after a complaint from the girl.

In her complaint, the girl said she attended a party Sep 12 with nine members of Anwar's NGO.

During the party, she got drunk and started vomiting. Anwar and the others advised her to stay at Anwar's flat. She agreed and went to sleep.

The next morning when she woke up, she found out she was sexually assaulted but kept silent as she feared her identity would be revealed. A few days later, the girl filed a complaint before the National Commission for Women, which forwarded it to police.