UP agriculture dept employee commits suicide over 'harassment'

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A 48-year-old employee of the Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Department allegedly committed suicide by lying down in front of a moving train in Shahjahanpur apparently due to harassment by his boss, police said on Wednesday.

The incident took place on Tuesday when Ram Bahadur, a tubewell operator, did not go to his workplace and instead laid on a railway track where he was run over by a goods train coming from Bareilly, Superintendent of Police Dinesh Tripathi said.

A suicide note was also recovered from the deceased in which he accused his boss, deputy director of the agriculture department, Prabhakar Singh, of harassing him.

"Sahab bahut pareshan karte hai (The boss harasses me a lot)," the SP quoted Bahadur as having said in the suicide note.

This, however, is not the first instance of a government employee committing suicide, especially in Uttar Pradesh on account of harassment by seniors. In fact, this has been a thorn on the side of the Yogi government. Police officials in the state too, have been committing suicides on account of pressure from work.

On September 30, a woman constable committed suicide by hanging herself from ceiling fan in Barabanki. Her suicide note revealed that she was being mentally tortured by her seniors. On the same day, a sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) posted in Lalitpur district ended his life by shooting himself with a gun. He too was said to be upset with his posting. In October this year, there were four suicides by government employees within the span of a week.

Malaise among government employees owing to mistreatment in Uttar Pradesh seems to be deep-rooted. It is the low and mid ranking officials who usually bear most brunt of the situation. According to reports, lack of leaves and inability to address personal problems seem to be a main contributor.

While suicide notes point to seniors, The Supreme Court in July 2018 ruled that senior employee can't be held responsible for the death of his junior because of stress at work. The judgement came in the wake of a suicide committed by a government employee in Maharashtra in August 2017.

In December 2016, a UP IAS officer, Sanjeev Dubey, committed suicide in December 2016 by hanging himself “due to poor health”. But his colleagues, who were with him till a few hours before the incident, said that he showed no signs of depression. Similar was the case of another IAS officer who shot himself in 2009. He was suffering from hypertension but reportedly, his colleagues, in hushed tone, spoke about the work “pressure from the top”.

In case of the tubewell operator, his wife, Mayadevi, alleged that Ram Bahadur was under stress as Singh did not accept his leave requests and used to harass him.

Enraged over the incident, Ram Bahadur's co-workers placed his body on a road in Lodipur and blocked the route in the evening.

A case was registered against Singh late in the night, the SP said.

District Magistrate Amrit Tripathi termed the allegations against Singh as "very serious".

He said the chief development officer will be handling the probe.