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Depressed over going bald, 20-year-old MP college student kills herself: Police
When she did not return from college on Monday evening, her uncle lodged a report with police. A police team recovered her body from the railway track near Pipalkot, where her parents live, and found a “suicide note” in her bag.
The mirror told Nikita Laad she was going bald. Depressed at the thought of people jeering at her, the 20-year-old college student jumped before a running train in Madhya Pradesh and killed herself, police said on Wednesday.
She committed suicide on Monday at Pipalkot village in Khandwa district, about 270 km west of state capital Bhopal, police added. Laad lived with her uncle’s family in Khandwa town, about 25 km from Pipalkot, where she attended college.
When she did not return from college on Monday evening, her uncle lodged a report with police. A police team recovered her body from the railway track near Pipalkot, where her parents live, and found a “suicide note” in her bag. Laad’s uncle and friends confirmed that the note in Hindi was in her handwriting, said police.
Quoting from the note, police said Laad wrote, "With receding hairline and baldness growing, I started pulling my hair in frustration. My family consulted many doctors for treatment but nothing happened. My family also got me tonsured so that I couldn’t pull my hair and it would grow again, but all in vain. Now, I have to cover my head with a scarf and I cannot take it anymore. I don't want to live my life with a scarf on the head forever. So, I am committing suicide."
Laad also wrote she loved her parents and no one should be held responsible for her death, police added.
Inspector Vinod Nagar, who is investigating her death, said, "This is the first case I have seen where baldness has been a reason for suicide. We are investigating the case. Laad’s family members and friends told us she was depressed over going bald."
Suicide is the biggest cause of death in 15- to 24-year-olds in India, followed by road traffic accidents, shows data from Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 that tracked death from 306 diseases, injuries and risk factors across 188 countries.
Suicides have almost doubled in teenagers and young adults in India since 1990, replacing tuberculosis and injuries as the top two causes of death in a little over a decade, reported the study.
Rapid hormonal changes make it more difficult for teenagers and young adults to regulate emotional impulses, which drives them to take more risks without giving much thought to consequences.
