Tamil Nadu clocked yet another farmer death with a 75-year-old man dying of a cardiac arrest on Friday after he received a loan notice from a bank, reports TOI.
The farmer, who has been identified as Muthu Gounder of Thattapanagadu at Mallasamudram in Tiruchengode taluk, Namakkal district, received a loan notice from a cooperative society bank near on Friday evening. An owner of 9.5 acres of farm land where he cultivated sugarcane and maize, he had reportedly borrowed Rs. 1 lakh from the bank.
Mallasamudram police said that he struggled to repay the loan amount as his crop had failed. On Thursday, he got a notice from the bank to pay an interest of Rs 10,000 before January 9.
“He was very upset after he received the notice,” K Samiyappan, a relative of the farmer, told TOI. He reportedly collapsed and died in his house on Friday evening.
Several farmer deaths due to heart attacks have been reported in Tamil Nadu during the past few months. Distressed over mounting debts and watching the crops fail, farmers are under absolute distress.
According to the Cauvery Farmers Association (CFA) in Nagapattinam district, ten farmers succumbed to cardiac attacks on New Year’s Day. Three more had already died in December 2016.
Dhanapal, the President of the CFA, says that the organisation possesses documents to prove that these farmers died of cardiac arrest reportedly due to crop failure.
“We have their medical records, post-mortem report and all other details to prove that extreme pressure brought about by drought and crop failure led to their death.”
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