Jobless man poisons family

A toddler died of poisoning from copper sulphate, locally known as ‘Neela Thothaa, while another child was in critical condition along with their parents in a case of attempted filicide.

According to police, the 40-year-old man was in financial despair and fed the poison to his two daughters and his wife before ingesting it in Surjani Town on Friday.

All four were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where the two-year-old girl died during treatment. The man, his 35-year-old wife and their four-year-old daughter were in critical condition.

Surjani Town SHO Bashir Wado said that initial investigation suggested that the suicide was triggered by financial distress.

The man’s sister-in-law told police that he had called her husband to inform him about consuming the poison. She said they found the family unconscious and alerted authorities. She added that her brother-in-law had been unemployed for a long time, and the family had no food at home.

Increasing numbers

There has been an increase in the number of reported suicides in the city, with a large number of them related to unemployment. Nearly every day, several such cases are reported including some stating that the victim was under financial pressure, without a job or in debt. In many cases, the victim is found hanging at home, with family members unwilling or unable to pursue the case.

While data remains scarce, according to the World Bank, Pakistan’s suicide mortality rate was 8.9 per cent. That translates into over 20,000 deaths per year or 56 suicides per day.

Some of these instances have included entire families, most recently on February 28, when a labourer drowned his two sons and took his own life in Narowal.

A similar incident took place in Karachi in January when a man drowned his two children but was unable to take his own life.

The spike in reported suicide comes as the country battles with one of the worst phases of inflation. The consumer price index, the inflation monitor, jumped 31.5% in February year-on-year, the highest annual rate in nearly 50 years.

The goods and services in the CPI basket are divided into 12 major components with different weights. Of them, costs in four categories - transport, food and non-alcoholic beverages, alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and recreation and culture - jumped by around half. The weekly inflation rate also hit a 24-week high in February, crossing the 40 per cent mark.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2023.