The suicide of Jinka Bhoomanna at Neela village in this mandal mirrors the condition of small and marginal farmers, who are caught in debt traps even after decades of cultivation.
Farmers who had a poor crop season due to the long dry spell, lack of water resources and frequent power cuts, are ruing successive governments for leaving them in the lurch.
Bhoomanna (55) owned just an acre of land and he took another on lease from his brother Shankar and cultivated paddy.
He borrowed Rs.3 lakh from moneylenders to dig four bore-wells last year. However, all of them failed, throwing him into a deep crisis. He also borrowed another Rs.50,000 from his relatives to send his son Sailu to Dubai for work. Sailu went to Dubai in December 2013 but returned soon after as he could not adjust with life there.
He had married off his daughter Jamuna and three sons Ramesh, Sailu and Gangadhar.
“He was a gentleman, but the burden of debt always haunted him. Debt was always on his mind and he was thinking of ways to clear it. Thinking that there is no way left for him he took the extreme step,” said Mammai Dharmanna, head of the community to which the deceased belonged.
Bhoomanna’s wife Vithabai is yet to recover from the shock. She and her husband were at their semi-pucca house when he hanged himself to the ceiling on Friday night.
“My mother was fast asleep then,” said Jamuna, while trying to fight back her tears.
Bhoomanna was perhaps the first farmer to have committed suicide due to the burden of debt in the mandal, said Shaik Mahaboob, a farmer of the same village.
