A 50-year-old father, who wrongly thought he had caught coronavirus, hung himself to save his family from the deadly virus.
Bala Krishna, a farmer from Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, watched videos on the Internet and was convinced that he had caught coronavirus.
He threw stones at his family, locked his wife and children in their home, and then hung himself from a tree near his mother’s grave to save his family.
His son Bala Murali told his father went to the general hospital in Tirumala and was diagnosed with a viral fever.
Despite being told he didn’t have coronavirus by the doctors, Murali was convinced he had the disease.
He then told his family to stay away from him and even pelted stones at his family when they tried to approach him.
His son said: “My father watched Coronavirus-related videos the whole day on Monday and kept saying he had similar symptoms.”
“He attacked us when we tried to tell him that he did not suffer from the deadly disease.”
His son called a government helpline for advice after his father started behaving abnormally with them.
But he was told there was nothing to worry about and if he had not visited China recently then there won’t be any problem.
His son said: “If someone had responded in time, my father would have been alive.”
On Tuesday, he hanged himself from a tree after locking his family in their home.
His wife Lakshmi Devi called neighbors who let them out and they saw the farmer’s body hanging from the tree.
The deadly coronavirus, which emerged in December in the central city of Wuhan in China, has killed 1,357 and infected more than 60,000 so far.
More than a dozen drugmakers are working to find a vaccine or a treatment for the virus that continues to spread across the world but currently, there are no effective drugs for the virus.
Share this post with your friends and family.
[rumble video_id=v5b9lp domain_id=u7nb2]