Farmer kills himself in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district

Farmer Dhanraj Baliram Navhate allegedly committed suicide in Maharashtra's Yavatmal due to crop failure and debt burden. Navhate had four acres of agricultural land and owed Rs 2 lakh to a private money lender.

Yavatmal: A 52-year-old farmer allegedly committed suicide in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district due to crop failure and debt burden, police said on Friday.

The purported suicide note of Dhanraj Baliram Navhate,a residentof Pahapal in Pandharkawda tehsil, blamed the BJP-Shiv Sena government in the state for his plight, police said.

Navhate had four acres of agricultural land and owed Rs 2 lakh to a private money lender, a police official said.

According to his family, he had faced repeated crop failures in recent years.

Navhate left house on Wednesday morning to visit his married daughter in Vani, but did not return till late in the evening next day.

His body was found in a pit in his farm. Preliminary examination suggested that he had taken poison.

A suicide note found on the body said the present government should be condemned, and the earlier Congress government was better as it took everyone along.

However, it was yet to be verified if the note was written by Navhate, the police official said.

The farmer is survived by wife, two married daughters and a son.

Yavatmal in eastern Maharashtra had become infamous some years ago as 'suicide belt' because of the large number of farmer suicides.