Assam NRC list: 74-year-old retired teacher commits suicide on being marked “foreigner”

A retired school teacher allegedly committed suicide after his name did not appear in the updated draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. In the Mangaldoi district which is about 100 km from state capital Guwahati, Nirod Kumar Das, who used to practise as a lawyer after retirement, was found hanging by the neck in his room by family members. The incident took place after he had returned from his morning walk on Sunday. This was the third such incident since the publication of the complete draft of the NRC on July 30.

In a note allegedly left behind, 74-year-old Das stated that he was taking the extreme step to "escape the humiliation of being marked as a foreigner after the NRC process,". All his family members, including his wife, three daughters, their husbands and children, as well as most of his relatives were enlisted in the NRC. In his note, Das wrote that he blamed nobody and listed five people whom he owed Rs 1,200 and asked his family members to return the money.

His family members said that Das was under distress since the exclusion of his name from the complete draft of the NRC, and more so, when the local NRC processing centre gave him a document, about two months back, stating that his name was put on hold as he had been marked as a foreigner.

The agitated family members and locals had refused to let police take Das' body for postmortem Sunday, demanding that action be taken against the NRC processing centre for marking him a "foreigner".

They relented only after the district deputy commissioner and the superintendent of police went to the lawyer's house and assured them of a probe to find out why Das' name was excluded and how he was marked as a "foreigner".