Primary school head and BLO found dead in West Bengal’s Bankura; note cites pressure of SIR work

BANKURA: A 53-year-old booth-level officer (BLO) in Bankura, who was also the headmaster of a primary school, was found hanging on Sunday morning. A note found in the school room where he was hanging read, “I cannot take this pressure anymore, farewell.”


Haradhan Mondal, known locally as Haru master, was a BLO in booth number 206 in the Ranibandh assembly constituency.




He left home at 10am telling wife Mala that he needed to collect some documents from voters called for SIR hearings. Mala told police that the SIR, which she said was tak-ing a toll on her husband physically and mentally, drove him to end his life.


Mala told reporters, “He was very tense and didn’t even eat dinner properly. He spent the last few nights sleepless. He left home this morning, saying, ‘I am going for SIR work, not sure when I’ll return’.”


The note found at Rajakata Majherpara Primary School seemingly referred to SIR: “I am responsible for this BLO work. No one else is involved. The mistake is mine.”


Mondal also wrote in the note, “I trusted no one. Even after doing everything right, I made a mistake. Forgive me.”A police officer said, “We are investigating the death. We will provide more information after the postmortem report comes.”


Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in an X post, accused BJP of “bulldozing” the SIR process. “The death toll keeps mounting as another BLO appointed and engaged by the ECI has taken his own life under the inhuman pressure of a hurried, chaotic and politically motivated SIR process,” he wrote.


Banerjee said the BLO “died by suicide” and referred to the note, which he said held the “inhuman nature of the task” responsible for the death.


“What should have been a methodical process has instead been bulldozed through by a pliant, complicit Election Commission, bending its spine to serve the political arithmetic of one party and the ego of one man,” he said.


“And as for the BJP, if people drop dead from fatigue, despair or terror, it is an acceptable collateral cost, a convenient footnote in their power play,” Banerjee said, adding, “Bengal will neither forgive nor forget and History is watching.”

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