WAYANAD: One more debt-ridden farmer in Wayanad has ended his life raising the number of such suicides in the district to five in the last six months.
Chulugod Enikittan, 55, son of Puttanna Gowder of Marakkadavu, near Pulppalli here, consumed poison in his farm in the wee hours of Wednesday and died in his home later. He leaves his wife and three children. He had taken a loan of Rs 8 lakh from a bank pledging his paternal property and borrowed about Rs 3 lakh from other sources. But he faced no harassment from the bank, it is learnt.
He had been trying to cultivate vegetables in his farm after uprooting the pepper vines that were destroyed in the floods last year.
He used the poles of the pepper vines to grow long beans and cultivated vegetables. But the prolonged summer destroyed the vegetables leading to huge crop loss. Life had become unbearable for him and hence he took the extreme step, his relatives said.
In May this year, Dinesh Kumar, 53, another farmer in the region, had committed suicide by consuming poison.
The area close to Karnataka border witnesses a drought-like situation even now.
