Kapurthala pensioner who attempted suicide dead

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, April 19

Octogenarian rickshaw-puller Somnath, who had immolated himself at Dhilwan near Kapurthala due to delay in disbursement of his old age pension, succumbed to severe burn injuries late last night at Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) here.

Doctors attending to the 83-year-old burn victim said he was brought to the CMCH in a very critical condition with nearly 90 per cent burns. The infection in the respiratory tract and damage to kidney had created a condition known as metabolic acidosis and multiple organ failure. The complications, coupled with age factor of the patient, led to cardiac arrest and death of the patient at 1.16 am.

The body of the deceased was handed over to his family after a post-mortem at the Civil Hospital. He was later cremated at the cremation ground on Gill Road.

Somnath’s son Subhash Chander, a computer technician who lives in Janta Nagar locality here with his mother and sister, maintained that his father was a victim of “insensitive and apathetic system”, which treated poor people like his father and others depending on social security in a “sub-human” manner.

“My father had lodged a protest with the bank authorities, and had also written to the Kapurthala SSP about his intention of taking his own life if his pending pension of Rs 250 was not immediately released. But nobody bothered to respond and none tried to intervene when he set fire to his kerosene soaked clothes in front of the bank, which incidentally, is located very close to the police station,” a grieving Subhash told The Tribune.

He also refuted the claim of the Social Security officials of Kapurthala that quarterly pension had been credited to the bank account of Somnath in January. “My father had maintained that pension was not released to him after September 2014. It was the injustice inflicted upon him and others like him that made him take the step,” he said.