Click to play videoLos Angeles: The collapse of the US stock market has claimed six Indian lives. Karthik Rajaram killed his entire family and later committed suicide on Monday morning.
An IIT Chennai graduate and an MBA from the University of California, Kartik had gone bankrupt after the stock market crash.
The American dream ended in a body bag in this quiet, upmarket Los Angeles residential community of porter ranch when Karthik killed his three sons aged seven, twelve and 19, his wife and his mother-in-law some time between Saturday night and Monday morning.
Karthik wrote out two separate suicide notes, which said that he had considered killing only himself but took the option of murdering his entire family calling it the honourable thing to do.
“Source of it happens to be financial stake, a crisis, that this msn became embroiled in which unfolded over the past weeks,” says Deputy Chief Los Angeles police department Michel Moore.
Police suspect Karthik killed his family and himself after his finances were wiped out by the stock market crash in the US. But it wasn't always like this for the MBA from the prestigious University of California in Los Angeles and an IIT graduate.
He made more than a million dollars from a single deal in 2001 and also sold his house in 2006 making a straight half a million dollar profit he had worked with PricewaterHouseCoopers for 19 years.
Police are now trying to piece together where he invested all that money.and how he lost all of it.
Most neighbours and the Indian owners of his rented house said that the Rajaram family was like any other, calling Karthik a loving father. But a former boss of the Karthik's said that he was fired because of behavioural problems. Local media reported a colleague even calling him emotionally unstable.
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