Tired of his ruined fortune and wife’s illness, Madhavan (name changed) led his wife and two minor children into a ‘suicide pact’.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Tired of his ruined fortune and wife’s illness, Madhavan (name changed) led his wife and two minor children into a ‘suicide pact’.
He also killed his 85-year-old mother-in-law, who refused to die, before consuming poison and killing himself. Madhavan’s case adds the total number of such ‘family suicides’ in Kerala in 2005 to 59.
ADGP (intelligence) Sibi Mathews throws light on the alarming trend of group suicides in Kerala, which has been consistently leading the country with its high suicide rates in his book Malayali Ingane Marikkano? (Should a Malayali die like this?).
Of the 375 lives lost to such ‘suicide pacts’ in 2005, 111 were reported from AP, 85 from Rajasthan and 60 from Kerala. Altogether 120 teenagers died because their parents decided to do so. Mathew’s book is a compilation of his personal experiences at the crime branch and his academic research in the following years. When suicides in India rose from 50,571 in 1984 to 1,13,914 in 2005, the period of his study, Kerala witnessed 5,617 suicides in 1984 (11.1% of the national figure) and 9,244 in 2005 (8.1% of the national figure). Though West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka record far more suicides, Kerala took the lead in “suicide density”.
“What is relevant here is the suicide rate in relation to the population ratio (suicide per lakh of the population). When Kerala’s population rose by 16% from 1984 to 1996, the suicide rate went up three times,” said Mathews, who was awarded a PhD in the subject by the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam.
The problem is chronic in other states too. In the last decade, suicides have grown by 78% in AP, 34% in TN, 31% in Karnataka, 29% in Maharashtra and 14% in Kerala. While the suicide rate in Maharashtra is 14%, it’s over 20% in Kerala.
The suicide rate among women is lower in the southern state. In 2004, only 2,455 of the 9,053 suicides in Kerala were committed by women. The state, which has a healthy sex ratio, had only 27% of women suicide cases as against the national figure of 36%. The suicide rate (death per a lakh of the population) of men in Kerala was 42.6% while that of women were 15%.
In 2005, 6,830 men and 2,412 women committed suicide in Kerala. That translates into suicide rates of 44% for men and 15% for women. The study reveals men constituted 65-70% of the total suicides in Kerala during 1984-2005. Among the 60-plus group of suicides, over 72% were committed by men.
s_don@dnaindia.net
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