Another frustrated Indian soldier committed suicide by shooting himself with his service rifle at a camp in Gulmarg in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).
The trooper was identified as Yam Bahadur. A police official told reporters that the soldier fired two bullets in his head and died instantly.
This raised the number of such deaths among Indian troops and police personnel in the occupied territory to 260 since January 2007.
Earlier, Indian Defence Minister AK Antony had told parliament that a total of 310 army personnel had committed suicide between 2010 and 2012.
Antony presented the figures relating to suicides in all the three Defence Services of India, with army emerging at the top with 310 suicides of 368 overall aggregate of army, navy and air force.
In 2010, a total of 130 such incidents came to light in which 115 army personnel were involved. Navy saw one of its personnel committing suicide. 129 suicides were recorded in the armed forces in 2011 in which 102 cases happened in army alone. In 2012, 109 incidents came to light, of which 93 were from army.
Also in November 2012, there were as many as 15 suicides among reserve component soldiers who were not on active duty. Of those, 12 were from the Army National Guard and three from the Army Reserve.
In 2012, 126 soldiers from this population committed suicides: 84 from the guard and 42 from the reserve. In 2011, the total number of suicides among this population of soldiers was 118. Of those, 82 were from the guard and 36 from the reserve. In all, the Indian Army suffered as many as 303 suicides last year.
The reports further reveal that with one Indian soldier committing suicide every third day , the Indian Army is losing more soldiers to suicides and fratricides than to militancy-related incidents and same is available in an India’s Ministry of Defense report.
The 31st report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defense brought out the fact that 620 soldiers of the Indian army committed suicides in last 4 years.
Findings of the suicide report were also stated in the Indian Parliament by the Defence Minister AK Antony where he informed the House that 1,018 soldiers had committed suicide since 2003, with the yearly toll maintaining an average of over one hundred soldiers taking the extreme step of taking their own lives.
A study undertaken by the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR), whereby humiliation and harassment at the hands of their superiors, over and above the occupational and family factors were stressing the soldiers to the point where they either killed themselves or opened fire at their fellow soldiers or officers.
The consultants and analysts reached the conclusion that Indian soldiers deployed in the valley were committing suicides and killing colleagues out of acute frustration and depression.
Medical and psychological consultants and analysts are of the view that since majority of the soldiers deployed in the valley are married and are away from their wives for very long time, they are gripped by sexual frustrations which ultimately transforms into mental frustrations. These consultants suggested that the soldiers posted in the Indian-held Kashmir should be sent [back to India] on leaves to be with their wives once a month.
