KAILALI, AUGUST 21

A woman in Kailali ended her life over debt. Forty-year-old Reshma Chaudhary of Gauriganga Municipality committed suicide after she defaulted on a loan taken from a financial institution.

It is learnt that Chaudhary had taken a loan of Rs 320,000 from Unique Nepal Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited's Gauriganga branch. Though she had managed to pay back 81,000 rupees, she was unable to pay back the remaining amount. She ended her life by consuming poison over the same issue.

According to the microfinance's field staff member Santarani Chaudhary, a group of microfinance staff and others had reached Reshma's home and pasted a call-in notice after she failed to pay back her loan.

'As she wouldn't come to repay the loan during a regular meeting on Wednesday, staff from our office had pasted a call-in notice and padlocked her house in the morning and reached there again in the evening to create pressure on her to pay back,' Santarani informed.

The victim's son accused the microfinance company of causing her mother's suicide by creating excessive mental pressure.

'As we lacked the wherewithal to pay back the loan amount soon, we were thinking of paying back in a few months even by selling our property, but as the microfinance staff and others wouldn't relent and wanted us to pay at any cost, my mother was very tense and ended up taking her own life in desperation,' said the son Saroj Chaudhary.

On his part, microfinance company's branch chief Raj Kumar Chaudhary clarified they meant to create pressure for the borrower to pay her loan in time.

'When someone doesn't pay, it affects others too, as the guarantors of the loan cannot borrow themselves. That's why we had pressurised her to pay early. We didn't think that she would end up taking her life,' he said, adding she had defaulted on repayment of loan instalments for the past three months continuously.

Meanwhile, police said they were not informed about the padlock over debt.

'We didn't have any knowledge of a microfinance company padlocking someone's home over non-payment or whatever. Early in the morning, we learnt about a poison case; the family didn't have money and they were confused, so we arranged an ambulance and sent the woman to Dhangadi for treatment,' said Sub-inspector Bishandatta Bhatta of Area Police Office of Chaumala.

Final rites of the woman were carried out yesterday itself.

A version of this article appears in the print on August 22, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.