Wife of unpaid Kingfisher employee commits suicide

The Kingfisher staff-management fall out has just taken a tragic turn, with a report from Delhi that says a woman whose husband was on the ground staff of the struggling airline had killed herself, citing financial difficulty.

Susmita Chakarvarti (45), the wife of Manas Chakarvarti who works on the ground staff in Kingfisher Airlines, was found hanging from the ceiling in her DDA flat in south-west Delhi’s Manglapuri at around 1:30 pm.

She was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was declared brought dead.

The suicide note which was written in Bengali reportedly said that although she loved her husband and children very much, she was depressed because the family was in dire financial crisis.

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[caption id=“attachment_479787” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A tragic fallout? Reuters[/caption]

This latest incident is only bound to add more pressure on the struggling airline, which is seeing yet another employee strike over the non payment of salaries, forcing it to shut down its flight operations for three days.

Taking a firm stand, the government has also said that Kingfisher Airlines must get the permission from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) if it wants to fly.

The DGCA had in its report raised serious concerns over the non-payment of salaries to its employees, asking Kingfisher to submit a concrete plan before resuming operations.

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Kingfisher, which had a fleet of 64 aircraft several months ago before the crisis engulfed it, is now operating only 10 - seven Airbus A-320s and three turbo-prop ATRs. The number of daily flights have also come down substantially from over 400 last year to between 70 and 80.

Even though the airline claims to be in advanced talks with foreign airlines and non-airline investors for a possible stake sale to ride out of the crisis, it faces the possibility of a prolonged shutdown since it has failed to clear dues for the last seven months.