Times of India
04 July 2011
By, Ashis Poddar
Nadia (Bengal), India

For days, Mumpy would listen quietly as elders discussed how an eye surgery could save her father’s vision and a kidney transplant her brother’s life. But both surgeries were beyond the family’s means. So, Mumpy hit upon a plan, which to her 12-year-old mind seemed the answer to all troubles. She would kill herself, which would save the dowry, and her organs would give her loved ones back their lives.

Mumpy did stick to her plan. But the suicide note in which she had scribbled down her wishes was found the day after she was cremated. The incident took place at Jhorpara in Dhantala on June 27. Mumpy Sarkar was in class VI. One of the kidneys of her brother Monojit, a Class XI student, was damaged and the other was getting weak. Father Mridul, a daily wager, was losing his eyesight. “We had decided to grant them some money for the boy’s treatment,” said Dhantala panchayat pradhan Tapas Tarafdar.

Mumpy had taken elder sister Monica, a Class VIII student, into confidence and had urged her to commit suicide as well for the ‘cause’. When Mumpy told Monica about her plan on the morning of June 27, the latter laughed it off and left for school. Their parents were not in the house.

“Mumpy consumed Thiodan, a pesticide. Then, she ran to meet her father, who was about half a kilometre away. She told him she had dreamt that someone had poured poison into her mouth and her stomach ached. She was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead,” Tarafdar said. It was the day after her cremation that Mumpy’s father found a note on her bed. Addressed to her mother, the girl requested her to make use of her eyes and kidney for the treatment of her father and brother.

This left the aggrieved family inconsolable. “We were too late in understanding the feelings of a very sensitive child,” Mridul wept.