Grieving dad followed son who leapt to death
By Elena Chong, Court Correspondent
FIRST he lost his girlfriend, then his job.
With that, came money problems and shame that he could not do his bit to support his family. His mother had to work and he had to turn to a loan shark.
The last straw came when Selvaraja Suppiah had a tiff with his mum and was called a ‘lousy son’ by his father.
The 25-year-old leapt from the ninth floor of the family’s Telok Blangah Way flat – in front of his family members, who saw him jump and were powerless to stop him because he had locked them in.
Less than two hours later, his distraught father also jumped to his death from the same block.
At a joint inquiry into their deaths yesterday, no one from the family showed up in court.
Investigations revealed that Selvaraja returned home drunk at about 10.30pm on June 6. After a late dinner, he told his mother, Madam Maliga Veerapan, 49, he was going out.
She tried unsuccessfully to stop him from going, but he was already out the door. His father, Nadeson Suppiah, 55, intervened and an argument arose.
Selvaraja padlocked the front gate, locking them in. He walked 2m down the corridor and jumped to his death.
The family had to be freed by civil defence officers, who cut the padlock.
Nadeson, emotional over his son’s death, had to be restrained by police officers and relatives, said a police investigator. He leapt from the 10th floor of the block after having been taken to the ground floor to view his son’s body.
A coroner’s court heard that Selvaraja took to drinking after losing his girlfriend four to five months earlier and his job about a month before. On many occasions, he told his cousin and a friend that he wanted to end his life.
State Coroner Eddy Tham, who recorded verdicts of suicide on the two deaths, found that Nadeson had been traumatised by having witnessed his son’s final act.
The older man had also expressed his intention to end his life upon realising his son was gone.
The couple also have a pair of twins, aged 23.
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