Football fans miss CIL striker Ravindran's goals

Bangalore: Football fans who throng Bangalore football stadium every year to watch local boys in action will miss CIL striker Ravindran's goals.
The 35-year-old footballer, popularly known as Velu, and resident of Gayathrinagar, died on Sunday.
On Friday night, he had tried to commit suicide by consuming a lethal cocktail of liquor and pesticide called `metacid'.
Ravindran then telephoned one of his close friends and said he's killing himself. He was found half-conscious when his family members rushed to help. They immediately took him to a hospital in Sheshadripuram, where after battling for life for a day, he died.
Hundred of people, mostly footballers, came out on the narrow bylanes behind Ambedkar Park in Srirampura, to pay their respects. Ravindran's body was cremated at Harishchandra crematorium.
A close friend of Ravindran, Prabhu, said the footballer was playing for CIL, now known as Centre for Quality Assurance of Electronics and Radar Development (CQAL & R), a central government organization, for the past 15 years.
According to Prabhu, Ravindran was frustrated at not having a plum government job and not being married even after playing for so many years. "He was promised a job several times," Prabhu said. He claimed that Ravindran had got job offers from CRPF and CISF eight years ago. "But his coach promised him better jobs and didn't let him join back the force then."
Police said Ravindran had written a suicide note before drinking the lethal liquid. It read: "I have no job and I am not married. I am frustrated." The letter also `alleged' that his coach had promised him a government job but he never got one.