Jeypore: A farmer committed suicide by consuming pesticide over outstanding loan burden and lack of money to start farm works, Monday. The deceased was identified as Laiban Bhatra of Putra village under Jeypore Sadar police limits in Koraput. Sources said, Bhatra was earning his livelihood by tilling his few patch of ancestral land as well as by working as a share-cropper. After finding Bhatra writhing in pain, family members rushed him to Ravanaguda primary health centre. They later shifted him to the district headquarters hospital in Jeypore after his condition deteriorated.
However, he succumbed during treatment despite all the efforts by the doctors. Police registered a case of unnatural death and sent the body for postmortem. The deceased’s son said that his father had borrowed from the local money lenders to perform the post-death rituals of his grandfather, who died last month. He was left without any money and unable to start farm works. This pushed him to distress and might have forced him to take the extreme step.