It was widely apprehended that the long spell of nationwide lockdown was going to spell trouble for the country’s poor, daily wagers, farming community, middle class and low-income group but very few expected this will start so early. With the lockdown leaving them jobless and their sources of income drying up fast, desperate villagers have taken the extreme step—they are ending their lives! In the past 20 days, at least six villagers have committed suicides in Bihar being unable to bear the financial crunch.

In the latest incident, a couple committed suicide at Maricha Village in Hajipur, the Lok Sabha constituency which has elected Bihar Dalit icon Ram Vilas Paswan as many as eight times in the past. He is currently the Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution. The seat is currently represented by his younger brother Pashupati Kumar Paras in the Lok Sabha.

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As per reports, the couple—Ramesh Sah, 35 and his wife Suman Devi, 32—had bought a truck three years back from loans. The truck business brought happiness in the family as they were not only paying the loans on time but had also admitted their two sons, aged 10 and 7, to a reputed private school. The sudden lockdown, however, created trouble in the family as they were unable to pay the outstanding loans taken from the local villagers.

Last night, the couple fell out over the issue of how to pay back the loan and in a fit of rage, the woman set herself on fire. The man tried hard to save her but failed in his effort and himself suffered burn injuries. Soon after his wife died, the man rushed to the local orchard and hung himself from a tree. The police have recovered their bodies and sent them for postmortem.

Last month, on 20 April, a 35-year-old man had committed suicide by hanging from the ventilator in the bathroom of his flat in Patna as he was living under severe stress after being pushed out of his job. The victim’s wife said Dhananjay Kumar earlier worked as a project manager with a telecom company in Delhi, but after facing trouble, he quit the job. After much effort, he had managed to get a job in a networking company in Patna but lost it soon due to lockdown as a result of Covid-19. Eventually, he hung himself using a towel in the bathroom. “He (the victim) had been living under severe stress after the company told him to go,” was what his wife Khusi Dutta told the police.

Local media reported that a migrant labourer from Bihar also committed suicide in his rented room in Hyderabad on 14 April after he was left unemployed and was facing starvation. Reports said his family members had asked him to maintain cool and even promised to send him money soon but he ended his life before the money could reach him. The victim, Mohammad Aamir, worked as a car mechanic in a garage.

Another shocking incident was reported from Lakhisarai district where a poor tea-seller committed suicide on 11 April after allegedly being left jobless due to the lockdown. The local administration, however, claims he ended his life due to family tension adding it had provided immediate ration to the family.

But the most horrible story was reported from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s home district of Nalanda where a teenage boy stole the purse of a woman shopper to buy food for his widowed mother who had not eaten for days as the family had nothing to eat at home. The boy was the lone bread-earner of the family working in roadside hotels or dhabas but was left jobless when all these hotels were shut due to the lockdown, pushing the family on the brink of starvation.

The entire story came to light after the boy was produced in the local court in Nalanda last month, and the judge asked him the reason for committing the crime. The juvenile justice board judge Manvendra Mishra was so much moved by his story that he not only acquitted the boy from the case but also told the local authorities to provide immediate relief to his family. Subsequently, the local authorities rushed ration, cash and clothes to the family and also announced to provide a house to them. The family had been living in a thatched house.