BHOPAL: Alleged suicides involving a couple and two political leaders - a BJP member and the other from Congress - have shaken Madhya Pradesh in the past 24 hours.
The suicide by the couple whose children had reportedly gifted their piggy bank to Rahul Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in 2022 raised the political temperature in the state on Friday.
Eight days after the ED team searched his premises in connection with a Rs 6 crore loan fraud case, businessman Manoj Parmar and his wife Neha Parmar were found hanging in their house in Ashta town of central MP’s Sehore district on Friday morning.
The couple has left behind three kids, including an 18-year-old daughter and two sons aged 16 and 13. The police have recovered a five-page suicide note addressed to 17 entities, spanning from the President and the PM to the LoP in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi and MP CM Dr Mohan Yadav.
The letter mentions harassment by the ED, prompting the businessman to end his life with his wife. It also mentions pressure to disassociate with the Congress and join the BJP.
DIG-Bhopal Rural OP Tripathi said, “Prima facie, it’s a matter of suicide by the couple. The police have seized a letter addressed to various entities, and investigations are underway.”
The opposition Congress went on the offensive against the ruling BJP and the government in the matter. Meanwhile, in Delhi, former MP CM and current Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh told journalists, “Parmar told me on Wednesday that since he was supporting the Congress, the ED was raiding his premises.”
BJP MP and spokesperson Narendra Saluja said that in 2017, a case of cheating and fraud was registered against Parmar in connection with bank loan fraud. The local court awarded him seven years imprisonment. The CBI booked Parmar in the case, and that probe is still underway.
Meanwhile, two more high-profile suicides were reported in the state over the last 24 hours. A septuagenarian BJP leader, Kanhiram Raghuvanshi, believed to be under acute depression, shot himself dead with his licensed gun at his house in the Ganesh Nagar area of Chhindwara city.
Another aged politician, the opposition Congress’s Gwalior City unit’s acting chief Amar Singh Mahor, allegedly hanged himself to death inside his house in the Madhoganj area of Gwalior.
(If you are having suicidal thoughts, or are worried about a friend or need emotional support, someone is always there to listen. Call Sneha Foundation - 04424640050 (available 24x7) or iCall, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences' helpline - 02225521111, which is available Monday to Saturday from 8 am to 10 pm.)