Boy Jumps To Death For Smartphone

Kota (Rajasthan): In a sheer consumerism-driven tragedy, an 18-year-old boy, upset with his daily wager parent's failure to buy him a high-end smartphone jumped to death into a 70-ft deep ditch in Parana village of Bundi district on Tuesday.

The teenager, a 9th class student, left home with his younger brother after a minor spat with his parents after they expressed their inability to buy the costly mobile phone, reached the apex of a stone quarry and jumped into the deep ditch to the horror of his brother. The boy took the plunge yelling "I'm going to die," leaving his distraught brother to run back home and tell his parents about the incident.

The Dabi police station in-charge Sampat Singh, in whose jurisdiction the incident occurred, said that the body of the boy was handed over to his parent after its post mortem. A case too was registered in the matter, he said.

Singh said the teenager, a native of Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh, had been studying in class IX in his village but had dropped out of the school owing to the poverty of his parents, who had migrated to Rajasthan to work as labourers in the stone quarry here. The police officer said the boy committed suicide, hankering for a costlier mobile phone despite his parents having bought him a mobile phone worth Rs 8,000 a few months back.