Lack of a steady source of income and the inability to sustain his family amid the COVID lockdown, led an auto driver from Patna, Bihar to commit suicide on June 13.
The 25-year-old youth, Pradeep is survived by his three children. He had been struggling to earn a living as an auto-rickshaw driver and had also failed to find work as a daily wager. He has purchased the auto on loan. Due to three months of lockdown, he wasn’t able to pay instalments as there were no earnings.
According to an NDTV report, the deceased’s father revealed that none of the family members had been allotted a ration card despite all their efforts which made sustaining themselves even more difficult. The victim’s father Vijay Singh in his statement to PMCH temporary police outpost in-charge Amit Kumar said his son was in extreme financial crisis due to the lockdown.
Pradeep did not open his bedroom’s door for several hours late Saturday night after which family forcibly entered inside to find the victim hanging from a ceiling fan, as per The Times Of India report.
However, after news of his death reached the authorities, the Patna District Magistrate, Kumar Ravi, rushed to the grieving family’s home on June 15 with 25 kg of rice and wheat.
Including Pradeep, four people have died in Patna either due to unemployment or financial crisis. Earlier in the week, a 55-year-old man who worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant was found hanging in the CID colony in Patna due to having lost his lost. On May 25, an autorickshaw driver, Rajesh Pandey, had also committed suicide at Khajekala in Patna City due to a financial crisis in the lockdown period, as per Patna Autorickshaw Association.
The tragic death of the driver also brought to the forefront the issue of unemployment the state of Bihar has been grappling with. According to think-tank CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy), the unemployment rate in Bihar is 46.2 per cent, as of May 2020.
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