KARIMNAGAR: A 70-year-old farmer died of a heart attack while waiting for his paddy to be procured at a purchasing centre at Abadi-Jammikunta in Jammikutna mandal on Tuesday. The incident caused a lot of grief among other farmers.
Bitla Ailaiah owned 20 guntas of agriculture land and had taken another 20 guntas on lease, on which he had cultivated paddy. About 15 days ago, he first brought his paddy produce to a procurement centre. However, as the moisture content of his paddy wasn’t within the accepted limits, it wasn’t procured then. On Tuesday, while Ailaiah was drying his paddy and filling it in bags, he suffered a heart attack, collapsed on a heap of paddy and died on the spot.
The farmer is survived by his wife Laxmi and his daughter, who recently got married. His kin were inconsolable over their loss. Laxmi lamented that had authorities procured paddy from him earlier, her husband would have still been alive.
Meanwhile, after the incident, BJP leaders rushed to the spot and staged a protest against the authorities at the procurement centre. The police also arrived and shifted Ailaiah’s body for a postmortem examination.
Commenting on Ailaiah’s death, Additional Collector GV Shyam Prasad Lal issued a statement that Ailaiah had come to the centre on December 4, and had been issued a token dated December 6. He claimed that the farmer had died of a heart attack, and the procurement centre organisers were not at fault.
While 10,603 quintals of paddy has been procured by the centre from 106 farmers until now, another 1,000 quintals to be bought is still lying at the centre.
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