Farmer suicide after drought, girl birth

Burdwan, 1 Sep: A farmer committed suicide in Burdwan today, apparently driven by drought, debt and the anxiety of bringing up a daughter born four days ago.

Gosain Patra, 32, is the third farmer from Burdwan’s Ausgram to have committed suicide this year. Gosain, a resident of Purbatotipara village, hanged himself from a tree this morning.

The farmer’s family members said he had managed to cultivate only half of his two-and-a-half bigha land because of the scanty rainfall.

“He had borrowed Rs 4,000 this year to buy seeds and fertilisers. He had failed to repay Rs 14,000 borrowed from moneylenders last year because of a bad crop. On top of that, he was depressed because his wife had given birth to a daughter. He already has a three-year-old son,” said Madhusudan, 48, Gosain’s elder brother.

“My brother had told me about his feeling of despair. He failed to cope with the pressure,” he added. Madhusudan said he had spoken to Gosain this morning and he had “sounded normal”.

“He told me he would go to his field and then visit his wife in hospital. His wife gave birth to their daughter at Burdwan Medical College and Hospital on Sunday. Gosain told me the doctors had detected a stone in his wife’s gall bladder. Two hours after he stepped out of his home, his neighbours found him hanging from a tree near his plot,” Madhusudan said.

Gosain’s wife Champa, who has not been told about her husband’s death, said: “My husband came to visit me yesterday and told me he was clueless how he would bring up our daughter. He was also worried how he would get her married when she grows up,” Champa said from her hospital bed this afternoon.

Trinamool Congress leaders Sisir Adhikari and Partha Chatterjee visited Champa at the hospital and handed Rs 25,000 in cash to her. They refrained from telling her about her husband’s death.

Late last month, farmers Jitu Bagdi and Yunus Sheikh had killed themselves by drinking pesticide after suffering losses because of the scanty rainfall.


The Telegraph