Bodies of expats brought home

After losing their crop to successive years of monsoon failure, Mende Sayanna and Nangi Shankar, farmers from undivided Nizamabad district, went to the Gulf to work as labourers and clear their debts.

Their plans, however, did not work out. Sayanna committed suicide in October 2016, while Shankar fell sick due to the extreme weather and succumbed a fortnight ago. Their bodies reached the city on Tuesday.

Their families received their bodies at the Shamshabad airport and took them to their native places. The families were helped by Telangana Jagruthi volunteers in the documentation process in the Gulf and at the airport.

Sayanna hailed from Uploor village in Kammaripalli mandal in Nizamabad district. He owned a two-acre parcel land in his village. After drought struck the area, he lost his crop and his debts doubled, sources said.

He tried to clear the loans by working as a daily wage labourer and did part-time jobs, but could not earn enough money.

About 25 persons from the village were working in Saudi Arabia. Inspired by their success stories, he decided to follow them and earn money.

He went to Saudi Arabia nearly five years ago. When he came home last in July 2016, he told his wife and son that he would continue to work till their debts were cleared.

However, three months after he went back to Saudi Arabia, he hanged himself in his room on October 16.

“We did not want him to go back, but he insisted that with this third tenure and that we can clear our debts on the house and the land and be happy after that,” his son M. Bhaskar, a farmer, said.

Sayanna’s wife Bhagya fell sick after learning after his death. More than 100 days after his father’s death, Bhaskar received the body on Thursday.

The story of Nangi Shankar, who hailed from Lingampelli in Kamareddy district, was similar. His family was also dependant on agriculture. After the monsoons failed and the debt burden increased, he went to Bahrain to work as a labourer four years ago.

His family said that every time he called them, he told them that he was doing well in Bahrain.

When he called in the first week of January, he was not well and his family told him to go for a check-up. Then, one day, officials from the company where he worked called up the family and told them that Shankar had been hospitalised and was in a coma.

“We asked them to send him back, but they said it was not possible as treatment was going on. We were hoping that he would recover,” said Shankar’s younger son Iyalam.

Shankar is survived by his wife Mallavva and sons Hanumandlu and Iyalam.

DRIVEN BY drought and mouting debts, two farmers had gone to the Gulf to earn money for their families.

WHILE ONE of them committed suicide in Saudi Arabia, the other died of illness in Bahrain.