Jacintha Saldanha, the royal nurse who committed suicide after the Kate hospital hoax, had tried to kill herself twice before it has emerged.
Reports from her hometown of Mangalore in India are suggesting that Jacintha, who took her own life days after Australian DJs pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles, took an overdose of pills during a family trip to India last year.
She recovered after being rushed to hospital, but nine days later the mother of two attempted suicide again after jumping from a building.
ADVERTISEMENT
Jacintha, 46, spent days in intensive care and was put on a course of antidepressants for nine months.Her brother Naveen Saldanha, 42, told the Times of India: “Jacintha never wanted the family to know of the incident and we played a behind-the-scene role. Even this incident was not discussed at home for the knowledge of it would have hurt my ailing mother Carmine.”
He went on: “We told her (Carmine) that Jacintha was admitted to hospital for blood pressure problems.”
Ms Saldanha, 46, was found hanged in the nurses’ quarters of the private King Edward VII’s Hospital in Central London on December 7, three days after putting through to the Duchess of Cambridge’s ward a hoax call from two Australian radio presenters.
The pregnant Duchess spent three nights in the hospital being treated for hyperemesis gravidarum, a form of morning sickness so severe that it leaves patients unable to hold down food or fluids.
On Friday Scotland Yard delivered a dossier on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision on whether any offences have been committed, according to the (paywalled) UK Times.
Ms Saldanha’s family have previously denied that she suffered from depression, but press reports from her home town of Mangalore, India, have detailed the two incidents last year.
The nurse was believed to have overdosed while attending a wedding in the village of Shirva – where she was buried last week — with her husband, Benedict Barboza, 49, their son, Junal, 17, and daughter, Lisha, 14.She was taken to hospital and treated for “self-harm”.
In January she was treated for head injuries in the intensive care unit at the Father Muller Medical College Hospital in Mangalore, before being transferred to a psychiatric ward.
She was discharged three days later with a prescription for antidepressants and a warning to her family that she was still a suicide risk, The Mail on Sunday reported.
