The public suicide at Delhi’s famous Jantar Mantar monument park sparked an ugly political brawl, with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition Congress Party accusing Mr Kejriwal of continuing the rally even as the man hanged himself and was then rushed to hospital where he was declared dead. Footage of the protest, attended by thousands of farmers, showed a bearded man in a turban and holding a straw broom — the symbol of Delhi’s governing Aam Aadmi Party — climbing a tree, looping a white cotton scarf around a branch above his head and knotting it around his neck.
Minutes later, several AAP party workers are seen climbing the tree and trying to free the man from his self-styled noose.
A suicide note found at the site reportedly identified the man as Gajendra Singh from the Dausa district of Rajasthan.
It said he had been disowned by his father because of crop failure and could not support his three children. It included a contact number for a family member. Unseasonal rains and hailstorms have hit wheat-growing regions of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan particularly hard this year.
Both the Congress Party, which was ousted from government last May after 10 years, and the Kejriwal-led Delhi administration have accused the BJP of pursuing anti-farmer policies — in particular, a land reform bill that will make it easier for the government to acquire land for development. A police commissioner-level inquiry has been ordered into the suicide after Mr Kejriwal accused Delhi police of failing to react, despite pleas from AAP rally organisers for them to intervene and assist Mr Singh.
“We kept asking the police to bring him down. Police may not be in our control but at least there should be a semblance of humanity among them,” the Chief Minister said after the hanging.
But the claims sparked vicious counter-accusations that the AAP leader put politics before a man’s life. “These leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party chose to watch the whole thing unfold in front of them, right from the stage, but none of them came down from the stage and that’s why we say merely because of politics humanity died today,” BJP national spokesman Sambit Patra said.
Referring to allegations Mr Kejriwal continued to address the rally after the man had been cut down, Mr Patra added: “You were playing politics from the stage. You knew very well that this man was threatening to commit suicide. You knew very well that this man had died. This is not a time to score brownie points over each other.”
Rajasthan Congress Party chief Sachin Pilot said Mr Singh’s death was the 42nd farmer suicide in Rajasthan this year.
“In full public view, someone was trying to kill himself and no one tried to prevent the suicide. It speaks volumes about the people who were holding the rally,” he said, though in reality the political reactions to the tragedy say as much about the tenor of Indian politics.
Speaking outside the hospital where Mr Singh was declared dead, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi vowed to oppose the land bill and said his party would help the family bring the farmer’s body back to his village for burial. “It’s sad but we will do whatever we can,” he said. “We are going to fight this new ordnance of theirs because we’re not going to let the BJP government just take the land of poor farmers.”