Crop loss drives Hisar farmer to suicide

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, April 5

A farmer of Beer Baabran village in this district committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in Ramdhan Seed Farm of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University (HAU) here today.

The deceased, Om Prakash, (49) had lost his wheat crop spread over 8 acres and methi (fenugreek) spread over 1 acre due to unseasonal rain and hailstorm. Besides, the district authorities had served a notice on him, asking him to evict his house since it was an “unauthorised construction”.

Landless, Prakash used to cultivate land of other farmers. He had taken 9 acres of Zile Singh for cultivation on condition that one-fourth of the produce would stay with him, while three-fourths of the produce would go to the landowner who would bear all expenses.

Puran Singh, a relative of the deceased, said Prakash had gone missing from home on April 2. The family believed he had stayed back in the fields, about 3 km from his home, as he often used to do.

“When Prakash’s son visited the fields today morning, he did not found his father. A hunt was launched and his body was found hanging from a tree in the HAU farm,” Singh said.

Prakash is survived by his wife, Beena, and three children; the eldest being a 19-year-old daughter.

“He had fixed the marriage of his daughter and hoped to marry her off after the harvesting season. But the crop loss broke him,” Singh said, adding he shared his agony with his wife who consoled him while promising to work together to find a way out of the crisis.

Singh said Prakash’s cotton crop was lost to a white fly (a disease) attack in the kharif season, while previous year’s rabi crop, too, had met with the same fate.

“I am unaware whether or not he had any debts to repay. Successive crop failures apparently drove him to a starvation-like situation,” the deceased’s relative said, adding so far, no government official had visited the village to assess losses to crops.

INLD MP Dushyant Chautala, who raised in Lok Sabha the demand for waiving agricultural loans, said data from the Centre brought out that 374 persons related to the agriculture sector had committed suicide in 2013 in Haryana.