Indian driver commits suicide
Financial woes led him to hang himself from the ceiling of his apartment, police say
Ras Al Khaimah: Yet another man committed suicide by hanging himself to death on Sunday morning, reportedly due to financial woes, Gulf News has learnt.
The victim, Gopinathan Manikuttan, 43, an Indian, was working as a driver with a rent-a-car company in Ras Al Khaimah. Using a lungi (long cloth tied at the waist), he hanged himself from a hook on the ceiling of his apartment in Julan area.
Following an autopsy, police confirmed suicide to be the cause of death and the body was repatriated home last night.
"Manikuttan is believed to have had some financial issues but we came to know this only after his death," Sreedharan Prasad, community welfare convener at Sevanam, a licensed charity organisation, said.
Creditor claims
Following his death, a person running a chit fund contacted one of the victim's relatives and claimed that Manikuttan owed him Dh34,000, said Prasad, who has known Manikuttan for long.
"He has been living in the UAE for the past 25 years and was working as a cab driver until two years ago, when he took up the job of a driver at a rent-a-car company." Hailing from Chirayankizhu in Thiruvananthapuram district in the south Indian state of Kerala, he is survived by his wife, two children and a widowed mother. His daughters, Malavika and Devaki, study in grades 10 and 8, respectively.
"At 7am on Sunday morning, he went to drop off a group of hospital staff who were his regular customers and then dropped off another regular passenger at 8am. He then said that he would go to have breakfast and went home," Prasad said.
Process of repatriation
Around 9am, when Manikuttan's relative returned to their apartment after night duty, he saw the body and informed the police.
Sevanam, an organisation affiliated to the Indian Consulate's Indian Community Welfare Committee (ICWC), took the initiative to speed up the process of repatriation of the body and liaised with the Indian Consulate to make necessary arrangements, Prasad commented.
"The Indian Consulate has arranged for the body to be taken back home free of cost, in addition to bearing the cost of embalming as well as airfare for a person accompanying the body."
A.M.M. Noorudeen, secretary of The Indian School, Ras Al Khaimah and former Indian Association President, said that since the tragic death of a three-member family last September, many people have come forward to discuss their problems, mostly those involved in issues such as bounced cheque cases, those who borrowed money at huge interest rates and others who have gone broke due to failed business ventures.
Helpline support — victims didn't seek help
Indians who committed suicide recently in the UAE never called up a helpline set up by the Indian Embassy, the Indian Ambassador to the UAE told Gulf News yesterday.
M.K. Lokesh was referring to the suicide case involving an Indian restaurateur last week in Abu Dhabi and the suicide-and-murder case involving a father and child of a three-member Indian family in Dubai last month.
The 24-hour helpline of the Indian Workers Resource Centre (IWRC), the support centre established by the embassy in Dubai in November 2010, has received 23,151 calls since its inception, he said in an interview.
It has received 1,591 visitors and conducted 1,506 counselling sessions so far, the diplomat said. Among these, 1,123 were legal-related, 283 personal and 100 were about financial matters, Lokesh said. He said the centre also conducted 50 awareness campaigns, mainly on legal and financial matters.
The number of suicides among Indians in Abu Dhabi, he said, has gone down in the past two years compared to the year before. There were 22 suicides in 2010 and 2011, compared to 29 in 2009.
The diplomat said he has already asked Indian community organisations to identify people in distress and bring their issues to the attention of the mission so that possible support can be extended.
He urged community members in distress to call up the 24-hour helpline number 800 (India) 800 46342. The recent suicides which caught media attention involved professionals or entrepreneurs mired in financial or other personal problems, he pointed out.
Additional reporting by Binsal Abdul Kader, Staff Reporter
