‘Engineer kills self over loss in potato farming’

BURDWAN: A 27-year-old jobless civil engineer killed himself at Alipur in West Bengal’s Memari on Friday night.
Prabin Kumar Laha’s father, Gangadhar, a retired primary school teacher, said his son hanged himself after losing Rs 50,000 in potato cultivation.
“We had cultivated potato on about five bighas of land. The crop failed because of late blight and we got only 220 packets of the crop,’’ he said.
“My son concentrated on farming after failing to get a job despite passing civil engineering from Jadavpur University in 2010.’’
The crop fell about 150 to 200 packets short of expectation. Gangadhar said the family has no debt. There has been hardly any demand for the potato crop in Memari this year and lots of farmers are depressed, said their neighbour Rupam Konar.
Swapan Bisoyee, chairman of Memari Municipality, claimed Prabin was not into potato cultivation.
Abul Hasem Mondal, MLA from Memari, parroted him and claimed Prabin was depressed because of his joblessness and had been hospitalized several times because of that.