Don't kill me, ma

On the morning of March 8, 2011, Nidhi Gupta had breakfast with her sister-in-law Sunita, told her she was going to drop her three-year-old daughter Mahika to school, and walked out of their threebedroom apartment in Mumbai's Malad (East). Gaurav, her six-year-old son, accompanied them. Instead of going down to street level, though, Nidhi Gupta took the lift to the top floor of the 19-storey building. Once out of the lift, she walked with her children to the periphery of the terrace and threw first her son, and then her daughter, down 19 floors before herself jumping towards instant death. Before the final plunge, Nidhi Gupta had fastidiously remembered to take off her slippers.

A little more than a month later, 31-year-old Deepti Chauhan spent eight hours on Mumbai's local trains, shuttling aimlessly between Borivili and Churchgate stations with her son Siddhesh in tow.