Krishnagar, Dec. 4: A farmer trapped in debt since his daughter’s marriage six months ago committed suicide in a Nadia village last night.

Two consecutive crops failed, leaving Sanatan Ghosh, 45, neck deep in trouble.

The resident of Sutia village in Chapra, about 130 km from Calcutta, had not been Scrooge-like in getting daughter Archana married. He had borrowed Rs 1 lakh for the wedding.

“He went beyond his means for our only daughter’s marriage. Then his entire crop of jute on a 3-bigha plot was damaged in the September floods. He tried to salvage the situation by trying his hand at vegetables after the water receded. But that crop, too, failed,” Sanatan’s widow Nilima said.

“Constant pressure from creditors and the failure of two crops forced him to commit suicide,” said an officer from the Chapra police station.

The moneylenders were “after my husband”, Nilima confirmed. “He could not cope with it.”

When Sanatan spent generously on his daughter’s wedding, he would not have known that the floods would destroy his crop.

“When my husband expressed his wish to spend such a large sum on our daughter’s wedding, I had cautioned him. He was a small farmer and we are poor people. Such things do not suit us,” she said today.

A police officer said Nilima and her teenager son are virtually penniless now.

Fifteen-year-old Krishna, a Class VI student who was forced to discontinue school, saw his father hanging from a mango tree this morning. “Every now and then, the moneylenders came to our house and hurled abuses at him. He used to be tense at all times,” he said.