Friday, January 31, 2014

Choosing death over life- Dr Achal Bhagat in The Hindu newspaper

Choosing death over life

ACHAL BHAGAT

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Without waiting for changes in the law or development of a policy, we must all try and inform ourselves to respond to people experiencing psychological distress

Suicide rarely impacts our consciousness, except when news involving a celebrity hits television screens or newspaper headlines. It is not something, though, that our society can afford to deny. It is not glamorous. It is an unnecessary end of a life, which has memories, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, relationships, experiences and aspirations.

The sense of isolation of the person who attempts suicide is unfathomable. Sometimes, suicide may seem like an impulsive decision to an overwhelming crisis; at other times it may seem that it is a response to ongoing anguish and despair, when the individual loses the reason to live.

More often than not it happens when the balance between pain and suffering and between the reasons to live and the resources to cope with the difficulties faced in life is tipped towards hopelessness.

Alarming reality

Beyond the personal reality of individual lives, the Indian reality on suicide is alarming. In a recent study focussed on India and published in The Lancet, a premier medical journal, it was estimated that for nearly 1,87,000 people in 2010 the cause of death was suicide. It was estimated in the same study that in India the standardised rate of suicide per 1,00,000 people aged 15 years or older, of 26·3 for men and 17·5 for women, was the second highest in the world.

The same study also reported suicide as the second most common cause of death for unnatural death — that is, more deaths are caused by suicide than by HIV/AIDS, cancer or cardiac illness. This is in the context of the situation in India — where 90 per cent of people who need mental health support do not have access to it. There is a significant human resource gap of mental health professionals. There is no policy for mental health or suicide prevention. And attempted suicide is still a crime!

Suicide, however, is not merely a health issue. We are a society in transition. There is significant violence, discrimination, exclusion and intolerance that form the social canvas of our times. There is a mismatch of aspirations and opportunity. Relationships are not based on respect and knowledge, but transactional contracts of one-upmanship. The discourse with our children is full of criticism and unreasonable expectations. The young, the old, the women and men in our society are vulnerable to demoralisation. Such demoralisation is a breeding ground for helplessness.

Is it possible for a society to reach out to people who are thinking about suicide before they attempt it with a fatal or a non-fatal end? Is it possible for a person to be offered support? Is it possible to help a person step back and see at least a speck of hope to explore alternatives and choices one more time?

The answer is a clear ‘yes’.

Without waiting for changes in the law or development of a policy, we all must try and inform and skill ourselves to respond to people experiencing psychological distress.

We must start by creating space for conversations in our relationships. Let us learn not to judge people or force our opinions on them. Just listen and validate the person’s experiences. We must learn to recognise symptoms of psychological distress and illness. If people tell you that they are sad or feeling hopeless, do take them seriously. If they have lost interest, if they are not able to enjoy, if they have become withdrawn or if they are extremely anxious, recognise these as features of depression, which if treated early, will prevent suicidal thoughts.

Do not just ask a depressed person to “pull up their socks” and live. Explore if they have had thoughts of harming themselves. Have they attempted self-harm in the past? If they have, it increases the likelihood that they might attempt it again. Also remember, if the person is intoxicated, it is more likely that he/she would attempt suicide.

Do not patronise. Do not make the person feel guilty. Be with the person. Your words have power; do not use them in a trivial manner. Sometimes, sensitive silence is better than goading. Help people navigate their problems without imposing a solution on them.

Vulnerable people

If you are overwhelmed, do not be brave by trying to support the person on your own. Involve other people, share the responsibility of caring. Most large cities have volunteer organisations that provide phone-based support to people in distress. Most medical colleges have departments of psychiatry and most district headquarters have psychiatrists in private practice. If you cannot find a mental health professional, approach any system that provides support to people who are vulnerable such as the resident welfare association, the police, a health service, etc.

There is a psychological framework that precipitates suicidal thoughts. It includes black-and-white thinking, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. The person also may be coping with poverty, unemployment and debt. There may be a rejection in a relationship and failure in examinations. For women, experiences of violence and abuse in intimate relationships may be a determining factor.

For a large number of people, there may be an underlying illness like depression or schizophrenia. There may be a history of substance abuse with alcohol, cannabis or benzodiazepines.

There is a relatively easy access to means of suicide in our country. Pesticides and easily available “prescription only” medicines create a risky environment for such vulnerable individuals.

How does an individual who is considering suicide as an option help himself/herself? Let me address you directly and urge you to seek help immediately. First, it is important to remember that there are many people who did step back and live and were able to be hopeful one more time. People are resilient and people do survive. You are resilient and you can survive!

Step back for a moment. Talk to someone. It could be a friend, a colleague, a family member, a counsellor, a spiritual person, or any other person that you may have access to.

You have a right to live. Plan the next hour to be with someone or talk to someone, then with his or her help, plan the next 24 hours. Include the step of seeking professional help in the plan.

During this time, do not attempt to solve all your problems or even answer the question as to why you should live. Just let someone know how you feel and be with them. No decisions need to be taken. Each passing moment will give you a breather and then you will be able to look at your experiences and problems afresh.

Policy challenges

The lawmakers and policymakers have to shed their denial of mental health issues and put mental health and well-being on the agenda. The proposed Mental Health Care Bill which was recently introduced in the Rajya Sabha at least does two positive things: it creates a parity between health and mental health and it proposes to decriminalise suicide. Let us hope it is considered in the last session of this Lok Sabha.

The mental health policy has to clearly state goals and targets for reducing the frequency of suicide in the country. The access to mental health services in the community has to be increased substantively, and this will not only require a financial outlay for developing service delivery systems that do not exist, but also a change of thinking on how we develop a new mental health workforce. An immediate solution would be to embed online skills-based training on mental health and suicide prevention into training programmes for all teachers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, nurses and human resource professionals.

We have helplines and call centres for so many issues in this country. Is it not time for a 24x7 national suicide prevention hotline with trained professionals? Another step that would help decrease the rural suicide rates would be to increase awareness about locking pesticides away and safe.

We are the only country which perhaps spends more on investigating suicide as a crime instead of preventing it. Let us change that, for each life is as precious as any other.

(Dr. Achal Bhagat is senior consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Apollo Hospitals, and chairperson, Saarthak, a mental health non-governmental organisation.)

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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Aasra mentioned in the Business Standard, Jan 2014

The net is taking over

Social media determines how we live, work, party and sulk

Veenu Sandhu & Surabhi Agarwal | Neew Delhi

January 24, 2014 Last Updated at 21:50 IST

For many days to come, people will speculate what caused Sunanda Pushkar's death last week in a New Delhi hotel. Did Union minister Shashi Tharoor's wife die of poisoning or a drug overdose? Wasn't she unwell? Was it suicide? Or was it murder? No less a matter of speculation has been the social media's role in the whole affair. Writer Suketu Mehta has called it "murder by Twitter". Pushkar's very public spat with Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist, on the micro-blogging site, many psychologists feel, may have multiplied her anguish. Apart from other things, Tarar had tweeted: "The blonde's aqal is weaker thn (sic) her grammar & spellings." Still others believe Pushkar had the premonition that end was near, and it was there for all to see on social media. "Hasta hua jayega," (will go laughing), she had tweeted a few days before her death.

Social media is no longer time-pass in the country, certainly not with over 90 million users. The line that divides online and offline lives has blurred. Networking sites have begun to impact human behaviour. Lives are being lived in the open: open to comment, analysis and abuse. Mahesh Murthy, the founder of digital brand management firm Pinstorm, calls it the "demise of the culture of secrecy". This is the age, he says, "of diversity, of coming out in the open with sexual preferences et cetera. Social media will help slaughter sacred cows. It is a good thing to happen, except for the sacred cows." According to Murthy, the pitfalls of uncensored speech are for those "who think they can control their lives or are insecure".

But pitfalls are showing up. Some time ago, a high-profile couple from Delhi approached marriage and family counsellor Nisha Khanna. Their problem was aggravated by the wife's obsession withFacebook, to the extent that she would put out everything, including the ups and downs of her relationship with her husband, as status messages for the consumption of her social media friends and acquaintances. The husband was livid - he felt exposed. It took six months of rigorous counselling before the wife started controlling, though marginally, her social media behaviour. "We are seeing obsession, irrationality and an inability to spot the very thick line that divides the private from the public," says Varkha Chulani, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and consultant with Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai. People, she adds, are looking for Facebook 'like' buttons even in real life.

Feelings of extreme happiness, depression, loneliness and even suicidal thoughts are being shared not with family and friends but with Facebook 'connections' and Twitter 'followers'. Tweets or status updates that point to suicidal tendencies, in particular, can be telling. Some of these key expressions are "depressed", "feeling abused", "it's over" or "empty inside". A study - Tracking Suicide Risk Factors through Twitter - conducted in the US last year found a strong correlation between the number of tweets that indicated suicidal intentions and the number of suicides committed.

Having realised that the platform is also being used as a medium to vent and express personal trauma, Facebook has, for about a year, been sending reports on profiles of people with suicide risk to Mumbai-based suicide helpline Aasra. "In the last one year, we have received 350 such email intimations concerning Indians," says Aasra Director Johnson Thomas. Aasra then mails that person to subtly and sensitively convey that there is help at hand, in case it is needed. Facebook and Twitter did not offer any comment for this article.

DECODING SOCIAL MEDIA SLANG

I am an aggregator who has left a cookie crumb trail (while writing this) for a machine algorithm to follow. So, can it point out to my boss the scoops and their origin? In all probability, yes. For an all-devouring algorithm, no crumb, no target, is too small. Algorithms (at their core, a step-by-step method for doing a job) can sound scary, but social media analysts depend on these little-understood, obscure mathematical creatures.

So, information posted publicly on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites are fair game for these data predators. Suppose you click ‘like’ on Facebook, you’re giving away a lot more than you might think. Your ‘likes’ can be pieced together to form an eerily true portrait of yourself. A study of 58,000 volunteers by Michal Kosinski and David Stillwell (University of Cambridge) and Thore Graepel (Microsoft Research, Cambridge) charts the chances of an accurate prediction: 67 per cent for single versus in a relationship, 73 per cent for cigarette smoking, 70 per cent for alcohol drinking, 65 per cent for drug use, 88 per cent for male homosexuality, 75 per cent for female homosexuality, and 93 per cent for gender.

Another point is not all data out there are cold facts. Far from that, most are sentiments and slang: sweet, bitter and often intimate. “Wazup homie!! howz it going!!” is a profound example. “‘Yo, homie, I'll be at my house in case you want to come kick it later” is another. How is a number cruncher such as an algorithm expected to crunch slang and emotions? But experts insist there’s a bull market in sentiments and foul language. And an emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape. The simplest algorithms here work by scanning keywords to categorise a statement as positive or negative, based on a simple binary analysis (‘love’ is good, ‘hate’ is bad). But a more reliable analysis requires decoding many linguistic shades of gray. For example, to get at the true intent of a statement like ‘dude, i'm like......duuuude,’ the software will have to activate several different filters, including polarity (is the statement positive or negative?), intensity (what is the degree of emotion being expressed?) and subjectivity (how partial or impartial is the source?)

“People first thought that emotions expressed on social media were just cute and stupid,” says Sreeju Thankan who has done computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and is now working at Mango Solutions. “Now, they are recognising it as a rich vein.” But translating slang into binary code can be much tougher. “Sentiments are different from conventional facts,” says Thankan. “There is a long way for slang patrol to go.” For casual web surfers, a simpler sentiment-analysis tool, Tweetfeel, is available. It tells you the numbers of positive and negative tweets on a given topic. It also gives you their percentages. Its analysis is based not just on emoticons, but also words and phrases.

Ashish Sharma

* * *

Last October in Mumbai, a 17-year-old college student, Aishwarya Dahiwal, killed herself after her parents barred her from using Facebook. "Is Facebook so bad? I cannot stay in a home with such restrictions as I can't live without Facebook," her suicide note reportedly read. The parents were in utter shock. "Girls are more prone to putting personal and emotional messages on social networking sites," says Manju Chhabra, child counsellor who runs an organisation called Cactus Lily in Delhi. And they tend to get more affected by what people say and how they react. "And comments on this very impersonal medium which we are giving a very personal space can be very cruel."

Seema Hingorrany, a Mumbai-based psychologist, says one of her recent patients is a girl studying in Class 9. Her friend from school had uploaded a photo of herself, which got 200 'likes'. That upset the patient terribly because it reinforced her belief that she was unattractive and she became extremely upset, to the extent that her parents felt she needed counselling. Constant use of Facebook can affect one's self-esteem, if it's already low. Another of Hingorrany's patient was a 30-year-old who took to social media after he lost his job. But seeing other people's photos and updates made him increasingly jealous, and he began posting nasty comments. The recipients of his ire began "unfriending" him, which only made him more withdrawn.

Irrational behaviour can also be seen in the world of random video chat. Sites like Omegle and Chatroulette aim to bring together surfers together with the help of webcams. The promise is irresistible: an endless stream of visitors in your room. When Ashish Sharma (the author of the accompanying article) logged on, he met a gaggle of girls who giggled endlessly, a German painter who was looking for his muse and wanted him to pose in a state of undress, a Swede who danced around and asked him to sing in praise of his bottom, and a man with an iron mask. It was crude and shocking. The excessively sexual behaviour can be unsettling for an unsuspecting (and young) visitor.

There is another side to it. "Twitter posts," says an article posted on rediff.com, "have saved lives. A man lost on a ski slope in Switzerland got help when he tweeted his predicament. Another got bail from arrest as his friends discovered from a tweet that he was jailed in a foreign country." Human resource managers check out the profiles of job applicants on social media. "People might mask many judgmental things in an interview; there is a possibility that they might express it on social media," says Debdas Sen, leader of technology consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Inclusion and diversity are important for us." But job seekers have become wise to it. That's why many airbrush their social media profiles. All politically incorrect posts are removed. Friends are treated lavishly offline so that they write nice posts on Facebook pages. Some even hire professional photographers for as much as Rs 20,000 to paste good profile pictures.

But those who hire have started to see through it. Says Murthy of Pinstrip, "One can easily figure out the truthfulness of your statements by seeing what your friends are saying." One human resource manager says he pays more attention to what people post after 10 pm because "it tends to be more truthful". A senior functionary of a Gurgaon-headquartered firm says that he had hired somebody after he had found nothing suspicious on his LinkedIn profile; it was only later he found out that this person had been involved in some financial misdemeanour in his earlier job. "His LinkedIn profile had no clues, he was not on Facebook. That should have struck me," he says. Of course, the person was asked to leave.

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, says social media has made people forget the distinction between private, semi-private and public statements. "Speech used to be ephemeral, but Internet has given it the power it never had," he says. "Internet never forgets." The fact that traces of a communication may remain in cyberspace even after they have been deleted has prompted a legislation called the Right to Erasure by the European Union. Under the law, earlier called Right to be Forgotten, an individual can request all his data to be erased, including by third parties. India is also mulling a similar legislation under its Privacy Bill.

Those at the bottom of the social pyramid, who have little to lose, express themselves most freely on social media, while those with reputations to protect are cautious. The consequences can be serious, as the Mumbai girl who questioned the city's shutdown after Bal Thackeray's death in November 2012 on Facebook and her friend who "liked" realised: both were called in by the police. It's not surprising why even standup comedians, who can't resist taking potshots at one and all, turn extremely careful before they tweet.

So, is social media good or bad? "Social media can help," Amartya Sen said at the recent Jaipur Literature Festival, "But you must read more books

http://www.thebetterindia.com/9108/phone-call-can-save-life/

A Phone Call That Can Save A Life!

Halabol

January 21, 2014

Mumbai, NGO

- See more at: http://www.thebetterindia.com/9108/phone-call-can-save-life/#sthash.xiHIbLij.dpuf

We all realize that life is precious and yet every day, some or other person loses hope in life and gives in to suicide. Don’t we all wish to help them during their crisis of depression? NGOs like AASRA do it. Featured today on The Better India platform, Johnson Thomas, the Director of AASRA talks on how his NGO works to prevent suicides.

Life is a war. Doctors fight disease. Lawyers fight injustice. Teachers fight ignorance. AASRA fights to prevent suicide – that’s the theme behind AASRA NGO.

Johnson Thomas, the director told us that Aasra is a crisis intervention centre for the distressed, depressed and suicidal. It’s basically an emotional support service providing emotional first-aid to those who are contemplating suicide or are on the verge or in the process of committing the act.

We started way back in 1998, fifteen years ago on 13th September. A year before that we found that there were a high number of suicides in Navi Mumbai among the student community. This was a very worrying development and a group of people came together to set up this service as succor for those experiencing extreme emotional pain because of their problems they are facing. The service was for everybody and not just for students. We started out as a 6-hour helpline from 3pm to 9pm daily and then expanded to two lines for 24×7 services. Our team consists of volunteers from all walks of life specially selected for their innate qualities and professionally trained to provide emotional support to the depressed and suicidal.

As Johnson elaborated further, Aasra gets callers from all walks of life , from all across India and the world.

NGO Aasra has succeeded in saving 311,891 lives so far!

Mostly students, newly employed young adults, unemployed youth, youngsters experiencing break-ups or loss, recently retired, ageing and alone and terminally ill patients seek help from them. Johnson also elaborated a little on why depression and suicidal tendencies are increasing these days.

The world is changing and changing fast. Especially in India where the entry of multi-nationals and globalisation has set new patterns of behaviour among the middle class! They are left with little time to pursue their interests or give time to family while their desire for wealth and riches and status has grown exponentially. So this increases the stress on the family which is ill-equipped to deal with the changing scenario. The supportive factor i.e the joint family system which kept our families psychologically supported, has crumbled in most parts of India. As a result when crisis strikes, there is no one to turn to. Very often, the spouse or near or dear one is the cause of the problem or involved in the problem hence can do little to alleviate the pain. This has increased the psychological fragility of the new generation leading to an increased incidence of depression and is therefore leading them to suicide as an option.

Johnson talked further about Aasra’s role in helping people with suicidal tendencies.

Along with a Helpline facility, Aasra does many other activities as well. It organizes awareness talks, conduct workshops on suicide awareness, coping skills, stress management etc, visits hospitals, terminally ill care-centres, arranges public events, associates with college fests and events, distributes book marks, writes for blogs, websites and social media connections, provides email service, responds to letters, conducts street plays and so one. We even have events to commemorate world suicide prevention day/week/month, mental health week/day as well as Suicide Survivors Day.

Now that is quite an extensive list and we are truly impressed with Aasra’s bouquet of services. Its ten years of consistent high quality service and commitment have made it stand out as a big and reliable lifeline for many people all across India. It is because of their outstanding efforts in the field of suicide prevention that in January 2006, AASRA was awarded the Maharashtra Ratna Gaurav Puraskar, (awarded to NGO’s, activists, personalities of repute) by the Shiv Sangram Pratisthan, devoted to pursuing, upholding and commending the ideals of Shivaji Maharaj.

Aasra Director Johnson Thomas feels communication is a big support in suicide prevention

NGOs like Aasra are doing a very noble job. Life is the biggest gift and we all must live it fully. Aasra’s team consists of volunteers who deserve a round of applause. These volunteers are professionally trained and supported by internal systems. They come from all walks of life and classes. All the volunteers of Aasra, most of them being students, teachers, housewives, retired folk, young employed etc; are doing a wonderful job.

Johnson told us that their focus in the future is to expand their services by increasing their intake of calls with the help of new technology, provide a toll free number and also provide day care facilities and have a half-way home for people who are mentally ill and need professional support.

We thank Johnson for sparing his valuable time to share Aasra’s vision with us. For any assistance please call their 24×7 Helpline number: 022-27546669. And all those readers who wish to join Aasra and spread the beauty of life around can do so by visiting their website here.

This post was first published on Halabol Voices, which is an initiative of Halabol – a platform for initiating change.

- See more at: http://www.thebetterindia.com/9108/phone-call-can-save-life/#sthash.xiHIbLij.dpuf

Monday, January 27, 2014

Class 11 girl attempts suicide by jumping from Vaishali Metro station

India’s Suicide Problem,Wall Street Journal, Article with ref to Aasra

Monday, January 27, 2014 8:37:42 GMT

INDIA

India’s Suicide Problem

By Atish Patel

: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images; Shown, Jiah Khan.

The apparent suicide of 25-year-old Bollywood actor Jiah Khan last week was greeted with shock in India, a country where suicide is the second-most common cause of death among people aged 15 to 29, according to astudy in The Lancet.

Of the 114,800 males who took their own lives in India in 2010, 40% were aged 15 to 29, while 56% of the 72,100 women were in that age bracket, the study said. The report’s lead author, Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist and joint director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, says female suicides in India are often linked to relationships, including domestic violence and forced marriage. For men, the major reasons were related to work and financial difficulties, he told India Real Time.

“It reflects the general role of men and women in India,” Mr. Patel said.

In India, people carry out suicide mainly by self-poisoning with pesticide and hanging, which are more lethal than methods typically used in the West like overdosing on non-prescribed drugs, Mr. Patel said.

Public health interventions such as restricting access to pesticides might help prevent many suicide deaths in India, Mr. Patel wrote in The Lancet report, which said there were about 187,000 suicides in India in 2010, the second highest in the world after China. The fact that these two nations have the most suicides is in itself unsurprising given their large populations.

India’s suicide rate is about 16 per 100,000 people a year, the study said. The rate in the U.S. in 2010 was 12.4 per 100,000 people, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while in the U.K. in 2011 it was 11.8 per 100,000, the Office for National Statistics said. Countries with higher rates include South Korea, Greenland and Eastern European nations like Lithuania, reports show.

Through rapid urbanization, India has witnessed a change in family structure, with people moving out of joint families into nuclear families. Although the effect of this change has not been studied in detail, some experts believe this has impacted India’s suicide rate.

“Families now are fractured and the support systems in place earlier are not working,” said Johnson Thomas from Aasra, a Mumbai-based organization that runs a 24-hour suicide prevention helpline.

The confidential helpline, which has been operating for 15 years, gets 35 calls a day, Mr. Thomas said. That adds up to about 12,775 a year. The majority of calls are from men, who struggle more than women to express their feelings, Mr. Thomas added.

“Indian society doesn’t allow men to be emotional… they don’t really have anyone to confide in,” he said.

In a study published in 2011, an international team of health researchers said India had the worst rate of severe depression of 18 countries surveyed, with 36% of respondents showing at least five symptoms, such as loss of appetite and a sense of worthlessness, for a period of two weeks or more.

That study also showed that women were twice as likely as men to suffer from depression.

There is a lack of specialist mental health experts and psychiatric clinics in rural India, where more suicides occur. According to The Lancet report, suicide rates in rural India are about twice as high as in urban areas. The problem is exacerbated by the easy availability of pesticides and a lack of emergency care, the report noted.

Clinics addressing mental health issues like depression have opened in cities in recent years. But there is a stigma in getting psychiatric treatment, doctors and experts say.

“People continue to have a closed mindset related to mental illness,” said Sanjay Chugh, a New Delhi-based psychiatrist who runs his own private clinic.

“Mental illness is still understood as a form of disease which will be ‘fixed’ by faith healers, a divine intervention or through rituals or prayers,” he added.

Also, suicide is a crime in India.

In a 2011 ruling, India’s Supreme Court asked Parliament to consider quashing the law, but no action has been taken. Under the law, a suicide survivor can be sentenced with a one year prison term or a fine, or both.

In a 2007 report in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Lakshmi Vijaykumar, who runs a suicide prevention network called Sneha in the southern Indian city of Chennai, said that making suicide illegal has proved counterproductive.

“Emergency care to those who have attempted suicide is denied as many hospitals and practitioners hesitate to provide the needed treatment fearful of legal hassles,” she wrote in the report.

“The actual data on attempted suicides becomes difficult to ascertain as many attempts are described to be accidental to avoid entanglement with police and courts,” she added.

Last year, the government drafted a bill to decriminalize the act of attempting suicide but it hasn’t yet been introduced for discussion in Parliament.

“More than legalization of the act, what is needed is spreading knowledge and making people more mindful and sensitive toward mental health as a field, as it would automatically open doors for devising means and methods to combat it,” Mr. Chugh said.

Worldwide, up to one million people die by suicide every year, according to the World Health Organization. In the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60%, says the WHO, and suicide is among the three leading causes of death among people aged 15 to 44.

A post-mortem report said the cause of Ms. Khan’s death was asphyxia due to hanging. It ruled out foul play.

Atish Patel is a London-born multimedia journalist based in Delhi. You can follow him on Twitter @atishpatel.

Follow India Real Time on Twitter @IndiaRealTime.

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Friday, January 31, 2014