A 30-year-old Malayali nurse was found hanging at her apartment in Karama in Dubai on Saturday. The deceased, Shanthi Thomas, was a staff nurse at Emirates hospital.
Shanthi, who has a three-year-old daughter, got married four years ago and shifted to Dubai with her husband Antony Joseph from Kerala.
Shanthi’s father, Raju Kottapuzha aka KV Thomas, who is also a local CPI (M) leader in Changanassery, Kottayam district, reportedly alleged that his daughter had complained several times of domestic violence by Antony.
As reported by Gulf News, Shanthi had earlier booked a ticket to return home to Kerala but had cancelled it later. The report also quotes a family friend as saying that the couple had issues between them.
“My daughter had been complaining for the past two months that Antony Joseph was assaulting her for no reason. She had also been calling friends seeking help,” Manoramaonline quotes Shanthi’s father Thomas as saying.
Antony works in Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. Shanthi joined him in Dubai two years ago.
Kottayam Police Chief N Ramachandran told The News Minute that they have received a complaint from Thomas and would inquire into it.
The couple’s only daughter, Ann Mariya, stays with Shanthi’s parents.
This is not the first incident as a number of nurses have died under suspicious circumstances in Gulf countries in the recent past.
In June 2017, Nivya Chacko, 27, a native of Malayattoor in Ernakulam, who was working at a government hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was found dead, just three months after her marriage.
Another nurse, Shebin, 27 was stabbed to death in Oman in February, the same year. As per the reports, Shebin called her husband Jeevan, while he was on duty and said someone was knocking on the door. Though Jeevan asked her not to open it, she was later found dead in a pool of blood, reports The Times of India.
In another incident in the same month in 2017, a nurse, Sindhu (21), from Thiruvananthapuram, was found murdered at her apartment in Salalah.
In April 2016, Chikku Robert was found stabbed to death at her apartment, also in Salalah. She was three months pregnant. Both Chikku and her husband were nurses at Badar Al Samaa hospital in Salalah.