“When I return for Lohri, we will all celebrate together,” Resham Singh, 53, had promised his mother, Manjeet Kaur, before leaving for Shambhu border, where farmers have been protesting for a year. The celebration never happened. Instead, the news of her son’s death reached her a week later. Singh left home from his village in Pahu Wind, Tarn Taran district, Punjab, on January 3. He broke his promise on January 9, when he consumed ‘Sulphas’—a cheap pesticide—at the border and took his life. He could not bear the distress his fellow farmers were going through.
Singh is one of the three farmers who have died by suicide since the protests began last year at Khanauri and Shambhu, where farmers were violently stopped by Haryana Police. Despite being a prosperous agrarian state, Punjab has seen a rise in farmer suicides. A Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) study recorded 9,291 farmer suicides across six districts between 2000 and 2018. 88 per cent of these cases were linked to farm debts.
Gurmeet Singh, 53, a landless farmer from Punjab’s Mansa district, joined the protests on February 13, 2024, when Samyukta Kisan Morcha (non-political) leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal gave the 'Delhi Chalo' call. He worked as an electrician at the Khanauri border protest site. “My husband was passionate about Dallewal and his cause. He loved the jatthabandi (protest) more than he loved me, so he worked for free,” says his wife, Paramjeet Kaur.
On September 25, she received a call about Singh’s death. Struggling with mounting debt and unable to pay his electricity bill, Singh hung himself from the roof of the trailer attached to his tractor, which he used as a makeshift tent.
Reporter: Apeksha Priyadarshini and Rakhi Bose
Camera: Suresh Pandey and Vikram Sharma
Editor: Ehraz Zaman
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