SIR Anxiety Linked to Hy Man's Suicide

A 51-year-old man died by suicide allegedly due to fear of his name being deleted in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and possible consequences for the family including two mentally challenged children.

Under severe mental distress over his name not found in 2002 voter list and anomalies in the documents, Sheikh Mujbil Rehman, a cab driver, hanged himself at his residence in Bharat Nagar, Borabanda in the early hours of Sunday.

According to the family members, he was worried about the future of his wife and three children including two with intellectual disabilities.

Showing copies of various documents Rehman had prepared, his nephew Imam told media that he he had spent Rs.1.5 lakh for the same. As he had different spellings of his name in different documents like Aadhaar and passport, he was anxious about the legal complications after deletion of his name from the voter list.

Imam said Rehman was running around various offices for last one months to make corrections in the documents. There were also anomalies in the documents with regard to the date of birth.

Rehman also did not find the name of his parents in 2002 list for mapping, further heightening his anxieties.

The deceased’s family members said he was mentally distressed after hearing from others about the possible consequences of deletion of name from voter list.

Rehman’s wife said he had been very tense for last few days as he was unable to make the required corrections in the documents and was worried that this may result in their two mentally unsound children losing their pension and the family losing benefits of other welfare schemes.

According to her, he woke up around 2 a.m. and after drinking some water went to bed again. An hour later, he woke up again and when she enquired if he had to go for work, he did not reply and returned to bed.

She said around 4.30 a.m. their son woke up and cried loudly on seeing his father hanging.

Police registered a case and took up investigation.

Originally hailing from Karnataka, Rehman’s family had moved to Hyderabad much before his marriage 30 years ago.

Door-to-door enumeration under SIR began across Telangana on June 25.

The Booth-Level Officers (BLOs) have distributed 1,43,17,635 enumeration forms across the state as on Sunday (June 28), covering 42.33 per cent of the voters.