THATTA, July 4: After having been unable to arrange a square meal and even a cup of tea for days, a peasant couple ended their lives in their shabby hut near Jhoke on Thursday night.

According to their relatives, Jumo Kolhi and his pregnant wife Maria were passing thought a difficult time and living below the level of subsistence.

They went to sleep without a meal on Wednesday night and could not have tea in the morning. It led to an exchange of hot words between them.

Jumo left the house and went to the landlord whose land he tilled to borrow some money. The landlord said he would get money in the evening and asked Jumo to do unpaid work (Wangar) on the farm till then.

When Jumo returned home with some food, he was shocked to see his wife's body hanging from a beam and their two-year-old daughter and a disabled one-year-old son crying under it.

He brought down the body, loosened the noose and used the same rope to hang himself.

The isolated hut is located in sugarcane fields a few furlongs away from Jhoke, a dusty hamlet where Sufi saint Shah Inayat had established a peasant commune in the 18th century under the slogan: "One who tills should eat the crop."

Police handed over the bodies to the family after post-mortem. The bodies have been taken to the couple's ancestral village near Tando Mohammad Khan.

A pall of gloom has descended on the area after the tragedy.