Two more farmers commit suicide in Odisha

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Khordha/Kendrapara, Nov 11:
Two more farmers in Odisha ended their lives today allegedly due to crop failure and loan burden.

The deaths have been reported from Khordha and Kendrapara districts. Families of both the deceased farmers have ascribed crop loss and loan burden to be the cause behind the suicides.

While the deceased farmer from Goda village under Begunia police limits in Khordha district has been identified as Jugal Bagsingh, the one from Palakana village in Kendrapara district has been identified as Sridhar Sethi.

Jugal allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself to death from a tree. On being informed, local police reached the spot and seized Jugal’s body. Later police sent his body for post-mortem and began investigations in the case.

According to deceased Jugal’s family members, he had cultivated three acres of his own land and had also cultivated about eight acres of land belonging to others as a sharecropper. Apart from taking loan from the primary cooperative society he had taken hand loans from private individuals. As he was pestered by these individuals to repay the amounts he had taken from them, today being Diwali, he was under mental stress on account of it and took the extreme step, his family members claimed.

Similarly, Sridhar of Palakana village in Kendrapara district, who was distressed over crop failure and had allegedly taken hand loans from private individuals, jumped into a pond and drowned himself to death, his family members claimed.