Seven members of a family from Dehradun were found dead inside a car parked in Haryana's Panchkula late on Monday, adding to the alarming regularity lately of suicides prompted by debt in India, which according to the government is the fourth largest economy in the world now having “surpassed” Japan.
The Mittals, residents of Dehradun, were reportedly neck deep in liabilities. They were returning from a visit to Bageshwar Dham, their final journey. What led them to take the extreme step, investigators reportedly believe, was debt.
The Panchkula incident isn’t an isolated story in India. And there is a Japan connection too. Last year, Bloomberg published an article headlined: ‘Bankruptcies, suicide rise as Japanese struggle with mounting debt’.
Five days ago, 57-year-old Beant Singh and his 30-year-old son, Gurveer, were found hanging in their one-room house in Todarwal village near Punjab's Nabha. Years of debt and the sale of ancestral farmland had reportedly left them broke and isolated.
While farmer suicides are so common in some states like Maharashtra that they often don’t even make their way to headlines, such a situation in Punjab, where farmers are believed to be better off, rang alarm bells.
Prem Singh Bhangu, president of the All India Kisan Federation, said the Todarwal case is being used as a cautionary tale by farmer union leaders. “We’ve seen it before...in Mohali, in Ludhiana. People who became rich overnight selling land ended up losing it all to dubious investors and false promises,” he was quoted as saying.
In Kolkata in February, three women and a young girl were found dead. Initially it was seen as a tragic accident linked to a car crash involving three other family members, but investigations later revealed deep financial distress and a suspected suicide pact.
In Hyderabad, a couple killed their children before taking their own lives in March this year. Their home in Habsiguda was all quiet when police broke in after receiving a call on Dial 100. They left behind no note, but the needle of suspicion pointed to debt.
On August 24 last year, Saurabh Babbar, a 35-year-old jeweller from Saharanpur, stood on the banks of the Ganga with his wife. They took a photo. Moments later, they jumped in. The note they left behind revealed that their debt had grown too heavy to bear.
Lalit Mohan Varshney, 42, a resident of Kailash Nagar, Delhi died by suicide this year In March, after years of harassment from a moneylender. A video he left behind accused a financier of inflating a Rs 50,000 loan to Rs10 lakh over nearly a decade. He described a vicious debt trap where he kept borrowing just to pay interest.
In Bengaluru, a 42-year-old hotel consultant, Pradeep C, was found dead after setting himself on fire in his car last year in November. Police suspect he was overwhelmed by debts worth Rs 70 lakh, accumulated from business losses and unreturned loans he had given. He is survived by his wife and 10-month-old daughter.
The burden of debt has consumed small business owners, artisans and traders alike, a cursory Google search reveals.
In February, 53-year-old Sandeep Agarwal jumped in front of a train in Mokhampur. A small trader, he had once tried to kill himself before. Family members said that Agarwal had been struggling with financial distress and was burdened by debt.
In Maharashtra’s Ulhasnagar, Pawan Ahuja, reportedly under severe financial stress, killed his wife and minor daughter before dying by suicide in May. In a recorded video, he cited debt as the reason. Police recovered the bodies from their residence after family members raised an alert.
In Andhra Pradesh, a goldsmith, his wife, and two school-going sons were found dead in March this year. The family had been struggling with mounting debt.
In the same month, in Surat, a family of three, a 54-year-old man, his wife, and their 24-year-old son, died in a suspected suicide pact. They allegedly consumed pesticide tablets after being harassed to return Rs 1 lakh taken as a token advance from a property buyer.
The situation is the worst for daily wage and informal sector workers.
In Bengal's Asansol, a 40-year-old mason and his 35-year-old wife, who worked as a domestic help, were found dead inside their home in March this year. Relatives told police that loan recovery agents frequently visited, and the man was deeply stressed due to unpaid debts. The couple is survived by four daughters, three of whom are still in school, per media reports.
In March this year, a couple and their two-and-half year-old son were found hanging in their Kasba home, in Kolkata. Preliminary investigation suggested the parents killed their child and died by suicide due to mounting debt pressure. The father, an autorickshaw driver, had reportedly borrowed Rs 4–5 lakh for his son’s treatment. Two wall scribblings pointed to land disputes with relatives and threats from creditors who allegedly warned of kidnapping the child if the loan wasn’t repaid.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) categorises suicides under umbrellas like “family issues,” “economic distress,” “farming-related.” Since there may be overlaps, it is not possible to pin the exact number of suicides driven by debt.
In 2022 – the latest year for which data are available from the NCRB – 1.71 lakh people died by suicide in India. Suicide rates had risen from 9.9 per lakh population in 2017 to 12.4 per lakh population in 2022.
In 2022, five states, Maharashtra (1,941), Karnataka (1,401), Telangana (1,163), Andhra Pradesh (912), and Tamil Nadu (844)—accounted for over 89 per cent of India’s 3,417 debt-related suicides, according to NCRB data shared in Parliament.
Among Union Territories, Delhi topped with 28 cases. West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya had reported zero suicides due to debt. Bengal had 12,669 suicides in the same year, more than Andhra or Telangana.
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