A crusader in death

He had a wife suffering from tuberculosis,three daughters to marry off to add to which the crop failed on account of the drought. Narendar allegedly killed himself because of his accumulated debts but the farmers here hope that in his death he could set them free from their own debt trap. Most farmers in Rangail and nearby villages grow sugarcane and there isnt a single farmer in the village that isnt buried under debt,Mangeram Saini,the village pradhan,said. So when the government announced the State Advised Price for sugarcane which was much below their expectations,it led to an agitation that engulfed large parts of the state.

On November 1 unions even blocked a train laden with 26,000 quintals of sugar imported from Brazil as a mark of protest. In Bareilly,at a recent farmers Mahapanchayat,thousands of farmers showed up along with the leaders of the unions the Bhartiya Kisan Union,and Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Union.

Farmers in villages near Rangail also burnt their sugarcane crops. But the police say Narendar was too poor to be able to afford that. Besides he didnt cultivate sugarcane but had only contracted a portion of a farmers sugarcane plantation for batai.

While the relatives refused the polices claim that the farmer committed suicide,Narendars death has been reported in the local media as part of the sugarcane agitation in the state and police say the unions and the agitators are using the timely death to pressure the government.

The serial death dance of farmer suicides in states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have been written about,but in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar such deaths have mostly gone unnoticed because these states traditionally have low general and farmer suicide rates. However,there were a few cases of sporadic suicides in 2007 and 2008.

It is the first suicide in the village and the village pradhan is afraid it could set a trend. Who knows if more will take the same route? This is an escape, he said.

Sunil Kumar Saini,his nephew,said Narendar sustained burns trying to douse the fire at the sugarcane farm and succumbed to his injuries a day later,on October 31. Accidents happen. He died in the fields. I dont know why the police is saying it is a suicide, he said. We are tired of all this.

According to the village pradhan the family was scared and didnt want to get into any trouble with the police. Part of their refusal,he says,is pride that came in the way of their admitting the true extent of their poverty. But the truth is he killed himself. He was too much in debt, he said.

The police say Narendars debt was running into thousands of rupees,perhaps even lakhs. He set himself on fire in his house. The body was burnt from the head to the knees. If he had died in a sugarcane fire,his legs should have burnt first, a local official said. There were no FIRs lodged,and the police only did a panchnama. We dont want to get into all that, his nephew said. Jagdish Singh,an inspector with the Nakur police station,who investigated the death said it was unrelated to the sugarcane agitation.

Amid all these conflicting versions of the tragedy,the mystery of Narendars death remains unsolved. Sainis ailing wife is in shock and could not talk and the other members,three daughters and a 12-year-old son,looked at each other without saying a word. In their silence,they left undefined not just Narendras death but also their future.