65-year old Ishwar Chand Sharma committed suicide on Monday by drinking poison. He died on his way to the hospital. In the suicide note, Sharma had written, “BJP government has destroyed farmers in 5 years. Don’t vote for them otherwise they will make everyone sell tea.”
Dehradun: In Dehradun’s Dadki village on April 9, a suicide note recovered from a farmer reportedly stated, “don’t vote for BJP”. The letter allegedly also added that the BJP government has done nothing for the farmers in the past five years.
Times of India reported that 65-year old Ishwar Chand Sharma committed suicide on Monday by drinking poison. He died on his way to the hospital. In the suicide note, Sharma had written, “BJP government has destroyed farmers in 5 years. Don’t vote for them otherwise they will make everyone sell tea.”
According to the report, in his suicide note, Sharma stated that a middleman who helped him get a loan of Rs. 5 lakh was now blackmailing him. Sharma had hedged a blank cheque with the unnamed middleman for getting him to sign as a guarantor while applying for a loan. Per the note, the middleman was now threatening to use that cheque to draw the amount that Sharma had earned after selling his farm produce.
SHO Laksar Virendra Singh told TOI, “During the initial investigation, it was found that the deceased farmer had taken a loan of Rs. 5 lakh from a bank with the help of a middleman. The farmer in his suicide note has alleged that the middleman was demanding Rs. 4 lakh to settle the matter.” On being asked about the suicide note, the officer stated that the veracity of the letter is being checked.
“This is sad that when Narendra Modi was announcing compensation for farmers in his manifesto, a farmer committed suicide in Laksar because of his wrong policies,” state Congress vice president Suryakant Dhasmana said in the report.
This is the 17th farmer death in the state of Uttarakhand in the last two years, per the report. The Narendra Modi government has not released data on farmer suicides in the country since December 2016.
The seven-phase Lok Sabha elections begin on April 11 and will go on till May 19. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.