Nine suicides since end of February…

SHARJAH — A 30-year-old Indian patient committed suicide at the Al Kuwaiti Hospital by hanging himself, making him the fourth man to commit suicide in the past week and ninth since the start of this year.

Three suicides were reported within 14 hours on Wednesday, in addition to five others at the end of February and the beginning of March.

A police source said that the patient was admitted to the hospital on Thursday and was being treated at the Orthopaedic Section for back pain where he hanged himself with a curtain on Friday. The police are currently interrogating and questioning medical caregivers who were supposed to supervise him. The Sharjah Police have also launched investigations into two cases of suicide and the mysterious death of an elderly man which was ruled as a suicide by the Police Forensic Laboratory.

All the deceased are Indians working in different companies based in Sharjah and Dubai. The CID officer also said that the police last month investigated suicide incidents of five people, including an Indian woman and a man, a Bangladesh national, an unidentified person and an Arab who worked as an engineer for telecommunications. The official also said that the ambulance and rescue missions went to the places of all nine incidents and collected evidence in each case.

He added that there are various reasons for people taking such extreme steps including spiralling cost of living in the UAE and accumulation of debts, marital disputes, loss of job, unemployment, or, in the case of housemaids, torture and other forms of abuse by employers. Methods used to commit suicide are mostly conventional such as hanging themselves to the ceiling or jumping from multi-storey building, he said. “Communities should play great role in solving these issue and reducing the number of suicides” he added.