indo-asian news service
Parbhani (Maharashtra), August 10: Anguished by her debt-ridden farmer-father’s precarious financial condition, a minor college girl in Maharashtra hanged herself at her home here, sending shock waves across the region, police and relatives said.
The incident occurred a day after the Raksha Bandhan festival. On Tuesday morning, family members discovered the body of Sarika Suresh Zute, 17, hanging from a rod in the ceiling of their home in Javlajhuta village, said her distraught brother Sachin Zute, 21.
The police have recovered a page-long handwritten suicide note penned by Sarika Zute explaining the reasons behind her extreme step, said Pathri police station official Mushtaque A. Ansari. The heart-wrenching note starts by referring to her heavily debt-struck uncle Chandikadas Zute, who committed suicide August 3 (five days earlier) by consuming poison in the fields. “There is a lot of tension at home after (Sharda) sister’s marriage… You have still not been able to repay the wedding loan and the agriculture loans. Now, you have the responsibility of my marriage… I don’t want you to end your life like your brother (Chandikadas). So I am killing myself,” she wrote.
“Since the past one year, after our sister Sharda’s marriage, Sarika had been tormented about her own marriage, which was being planned for next year, and has taken this step,” her oldest brother Sachin Zute told IANS with tears brimming in his eyes. She was a quiet girl, engrossed in her studies and studied in Class 12 Arts stream in Shivani College, in adjoining Beed district.
According to Sachin Zute, the Maratha family’s collective debt through Maharashtra Gramin Bank, a District Cooperative Bank and a Credit Society amounts to around Rs 350,000, along with interest and other charges.
“My father has been regularly repaying his loans. But this year, the situation is terrible as monsoon has failed in this region, and farmers have to resort to a second or even third round of sowing. This will pile up the debt burden further,” he explained.
Besides the deceased Sarika Zute, the surviving family comprises Suresh Zute, 45, his wife Dwarka, 39, eldest son Sachin, who is studying in SYBSc in Jivandeep College, Beed, a married daughter Sharda, 20, and a school-going son Sunil, 12.
