SRINAGAR: Three women are among four people who have committed suicide in Kashmir, a strife-torn valley where suicide cases are on the rise, police say.
The number of suicide in the past two weeks has gone to ten.
A statement by the police says 28-year-old Jabeena, a resident of Gujjar Basti in Kokernag, was found hanging by a rope at home.
In Harwan area of capital Srinagar, a 17-year-old girl consumed poison and died while at a local hospital.
Elsewhere, in Pulwama and Ganderbal districts, a 54-year-old man, Mishri Kalas, and a 70-year-old woman also took committes suicide. Kalas hanged himself while the woman jumped into a canal.
Police say both of them suffered from mental disability.
‘More Women Killing Selves’
Suicide is a taboo subject in the valley where the majority follow Islam, which denounces suicides; so many suicide deaths are never reported.
But the few figures available offer an insight into the darkest corner of Kashmir’s psyche.
Suicide rate has increased drastically – 40-fold (from 0.5 per 100,000 people two decades ago), according to research by the Psychiatric Diseases Hospital in Srinagar.
More so, statistics provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveal that in 2012 in the state there was a 44.3 per cent increase in suicides than the previous year.
More than half of those who killed themselves were women.
Dr Abeena Nawaz, a prominent psychiatrist, says a declining tolerance level has increased the possibility of people resorting to suicide to ease worries.
She says depressed people are more likely to succumb to general factors of suicide like family discords, illnesses and poverty.
Among the younger lot, she says, failed love affairs are also a common reason.
Also Read: Stress, Love and Low Tolerance Push Many to Suicide in Restive Kashmir
