A man in Sepahijala district of Tripura killed himself on July 1, after he failed to provide a smartphone to his daughter for her online studies.
Police started investigation into the suicide of the 45-year-old daily-wager at Rajnagar of Purathal village under Madhupur police station in Sepahijala district over failing to provide an Android phone for his daughter.
The deceased’s wife stated to police that her daughter, a student of class X, had been asking her father Sukumar Bhowmik to buy her a smartphone so that she can attend the online classes being run by state education department during the lockdown.
The family has been running in extreme poverty for past few months due to lockdown and scarcity of daily work.
However, on June 30, Bhowmik had bought a normal low-cost phone having the provision of internet facilities to support the study of her daughter. But she was not happy with the phone.
“He become mute after the incident…Next day, the family members found him hanging outside the home,” police said adding that Sukumar did not have his dinner in the previous night and went off to sleep in a separate hut where he died by suicide.
The state government had announced to provide online classes through various local cable television channels and YouTube in the first phase.
Now the department has started sending feed through WhatsApp and text messages which require a smartphone to attend the classes.
Meanwhile, Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee accused the state government for the incident. “This is the result of the wrong decision of the state government. The state government has decided to distribute smartphones among the final year graduating students but the government should have provided the same to all poor students of BPL categories to help them have access to education at the time of lockdown,” TPCC Vice President Tapas De said.
