Pay cut threat drove 23-yr-old to suicide

MUMBAI: The stock market crash of last month claimed the life of Sharad Indurao Chavan, 23, though he had no investments.

Chavan was a dealer who operated the BSE Online Trading (Bolt) system for Swastika Invest Mart (Sim). He committed suicide on Tuesday at his company’s office at Juhu Cross Lane.

In the two suicide notes he left behind, Chavan accused officials from Sim’s head office in Indore of making life unbearable for him after several investors, who placed online orders through him for the purchase of shares, failed to clear their dues. Archana Matta, manager of the office, one of 15 run by Sim, found the notes,one addressed to the company’s directors and the other to Chavan’s brother, in his pocket.

The letter to his brother blamed officials working in Sim’s Indore head office. “After the market fell 15 days ago, senior directors kept pressurising me to recover the money owed by investors who traded through Sim and were yet to issue cheques for the shares purchased,” the note, dated February 4, 2008, said. “They said if I was unable to get these dues cleared, the same would be recovered from my salary.”

Assistant inspector Arjun Rajane said police were told by the Sim staff of the body hanging from a ceiling fan and reached the scene at 1:30pm. “We have asked the officials to give us their version of events,” he said.