52-year-old farmer Dhulichand's son said his father committed suicide due to debts.
A 52-year-old farmer allegedly committed suicide last night in Madhya Pradesh's Sehore, the hometown of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Dhulichand allegedly took poison at his home in Rahata village of Sehore, but his family says a local doctor has refused to confirm that he died of poisoning. District collector Sudam Khaade says no poison was found during the autopsy.
"He had loans worth about 4 lakhs. He also had loans from the village. About 1-2 lakhs worth of money. All his crops had dried," his son said, asserting that his father was deeply stressed because of his debts.
Around 200 km away in Mandsaur, violent farmer protests for better crop prices and debt relief escalated last week and six farmers were killed in police firing. The clashes were seized by political parties with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi making a dramatic attempt to defy restrictions on entering Mandsaur to meet the families of the dead farmers. He was briefly arrested. Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party also sent a team that was stopped before it could reach the protest-hit district.
The Chief Minister, who described himself as a farmer who understood the pain of the protesters, sat on a 'peace fast' over the weekend.