Bengal man found hanging; relatives claim CAA panic triggered suicide

Kolkata: A 37-year-old man was found hanging near West Bengal's Kolkata, with relatives claiming that panic over the citizenship issue prompted his death by suicide.

Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhisehk Banerjee on Thursday formed a five-member delegation to visit his family.

The delegation comprised party Rajya Sabha MP Nadimul Haque, minister Shashi Panja, Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat candidate Saayoni Ghosh, party leader Kunal Ghosh and local councillor Arup Chakraborty, the TMC stated.

The team was scheduled to visit the family of the deceased later in the evening.

An e-mail note from the Sonarpur Police Station confirmed that the deceased, Debasish Sengupta, was found hanging at his relative’s residence at Subhasgram in South 24 Parganas district on Wednesday evening. He was declared dead on arrival at the neighbourhood Sonarpur Rural Hospital.

The TMC stated in an X handle post that the deceased man's family members maintained that Sengupta, a resident of the Netaji Nagar area in the southeastern fringes of Kolkata, was “having frequent panic attacks over his citizenship being revoked”.

Sengupta, his relatives maintained, was worried about his future in the wake of the recently implemented Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and at the prospect of the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

A woman, claiming to be a relative of the deceased person, said in a purported video posted by the TMC in its X handle that Sengupta was born at state-run Chittaranjan Hospital in Kolkata in 1987. PTI has not verified the contents of the video.

She claimed that Sengupta, who lived all by himself, was having panic attacks of late over the CAA issue, citing the lack of citizenship documents of his father.