In a worrisome and tragic incident today, two persons committed suicide allegedly because their mandals were denied a merger with the Medak district following the reorganisation of districts in Telangana.
25-year-old U Raju, a native of the Kamareddy district died after immolating himself on the footpath at Tank Bund on Saturday afternoon. He suffered 90% burns and succumbed to them at Gandhi Hospital.
While there were rumours that Raju took the extreme step demanding that the government merge the mandal with the Medak district instead of Kamareddy, police said that Raju had admitted to his close confidantes a few days ago that he faced financial difficulties. The police is still trying to uncover the reason behind Raju's suicide.
While the police opined that Raju took his life because he was in a lot of debt and could not repay them, the villagers claimed that he was deeply disturbed by the State government's indifference the over the people's aspirations regarding their mandal.
In strikingly similar incident on Friday at Gattuppal in the Nalgonda district where villagers had been agitating since October 11 demanding that the village be made mandal headquarters, Beediga Soni (18) was found dead with a blunt force trauma injury on her head and burn wounds all over her body.
Nalgonda SI N Prakash Reddy said that as per their preliminary investigation, Soni's death seemed more like murder, and that they suspected the father.
However he admitted that a similar incident happened when it was notified that the village would be made a mandal headquarters on September 29, but was denounced on October 11. The next day, he said, a youth had burnt himself, possibly over the issue, and was still undergoing treatment to remove burn tissue in hospital. The police had taken the protesters into custody after his death and imposed prohibitory orders.