25-year-old army jawan found dead in Mumbai, suicide note holds superiors responsible

A 25-year-old army jawan committed suicide at a guesthouse near Mahalaxmi Temple on Monday morning, according to media reports. [caption id=“attachment_3741087” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. WP[/caption] The police reportedly found a suicide note in the room in which the deceased, Neeraj Kumar Yadav, held his superiors responsible for his death. The Hindu reported Yadav was found hanging from the ceiling fan of a 14th-floor room at the Shree Muktajeevan Swamibapa Dharamshala on Bhulabhai Desai Road.  A postmortem confirmed hanging as the cause of death. According to police, Yadav was posted at the army cantonment in Kirkee, Pune and had gone to Delhi on Sunday to deliver an official letter. Yadav then took the Rajdhani Express to Mumbai and checked into the guesthouse. The guesthouse manager opened the room with the spare key after Yadav didn’t respond to a sweeper knocking on his door on Monday morning. The manager then discovered Yadav’s body. A report of accidental death has been registered, police said. A manager at the guesthouse told Mumbai Mirror  the 25-year-old booked a deluxe double bed air-conditioned room run by the Swami Narayan temple trust on Saturday. He checked out on Sunday morning, but returned in the evening and was allotted a room on the 14th floor. “We cannot disclose any information at this point as it will hamper our investigation,” said additional commissioner of police, south region Pravin Padwal. Meanwhile, the police are waiting for Yadav’s family to claim his body and shed some light on his state of mind. Every year, around 100 army personnel commit suicide. According to a report in  The Times of India, 13 jawans committed suicide in March. Soldiers posted in far-flung areas often undergo tremendous mental stress for not being able to take care of their families’ problems ranging from property disputes, harassment by anti-social elements, financial and marital issues, The Times of India reported. An SSB jawan deployed for election duty in Cooch Behar, West Bengal committed suicide by allegedly shooting himself with his service rifle on 9 May. In March, jawan Roy Matthew was found dead at the Deolali Cantonment in Nashik after a journalist secretly shot a video of him speaking about the army’s ‘sahayak’ system. In January,  Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawan Suresh Gaikwad committed suicide, allegedly by shooting himself with his service rifle at Kempegowda airport in Bengaluru just days after another CISF jawan shot his four senior colleagues dead with his service rifle in a fit of rage following a heated argument over leave  in Bihar’s Naxal-hit Aurangabad district. Although a large number of officers have been trained as counselors, the number of suicides by jawans only seem to be rising.