With the shut down of the diamond units following the ongoing recession in the industry, two jobless diamond polishers committed suicide in two separate incidents on Friday afternoon.

Chhotu Patel (40), a resident of Yogeshwar apartment at Ashwani Kumar Road, committed suicide by dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself afire. Hearing his shrieks, neighbours broke open the door and rushed him to the SMIMMER hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

Chhotu’s son, Amit (15), also rushed to the hospital after learning about the incident. The Katargam police started an investigation and handed over Chhotu body’s to the family after a postmortem.

Inspector K S Patel said: “Chhotu was associated with the diamond industry for the last 25 years and was working as a polisher. We have found that the factory, where Chhotu was working, had been shut down since Diwali. Chhotu’s family includes his wife Ramila, son Amit and daughter Puja. He was facing a great difficulty. Chhotu was alone in the house when the incident occurred. His family members had gone out for some work.”

In a separate incident, Ravji Lalji Parmar (42), a resident of Ravi park society in Kapodara, committed suicide by hanging himself from a ceiling fan in his house today evening. He was alone in the house at the time of the incident. The suicide came to light when his wife Ramuben returned home from the market. She immediately called her neighbours and later informed the police.

Ravji was working in a diamond unit and was jobless for the last two months. Since the last 15 days, he took up the work of cutting zari threads in sarees to meet the financial needs of his family. Later, the zari businessman also stopped giving him further orders after the zari industry felt the effect of the meltdown.

Ravji’s friend Dhanji Patel, also a jobless diamond polisher, said, the deceased was under depression since the last five days. He had borrowed money from his friends for the marriage of his elder son, which took place a couple of days ago. Even during the two-month long vacation in the diamond industry, he battled for survival and started doing zari work, Patel said.

Ravji has two more daughters Hetal (16) and Manisha (15), who started working in zari units to tide over the family's monetary crunch.