A woman doctor posted at a Bihar government hospital in Banka district allegedly committed suicide because of the non-payment of salary for months.

Rani Indira Bharti, 27, was posted at an additional primary health centre (APHC) at Khesar in the Banka district, around 250km southeast of Patna. She was found hanging from the ceiling fan in her room at her family residence in Jamui on Monday evening.

The doctor joined the APHC Khesar around nine months ago. She did not shift there and used to commute a distance of around 70km for work. Her colleagues at the APHC Khesar said she was very sincere and punctual at her work. Her marriage was fixed recently around last month to a doctor based in the Samastipur district.

Sources said Rani was put on duty during Jammu & Kashmir lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha’s visit to Banka on Monday. She returned home in the evening. Her parents and brother were not in the house at that time.

When the members of her family returned, they found her room bolted from inside. They broke the door when the doctor did not respond to their knocks and phone calls, and found her hanging from the ceiling fan with a piece of cloth. She was rushed to the Jamui Sadar hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival.

Rani’s family alleged that she was under stress because of non-payment of her salary since she joined APHC Khesar. “She joined the APHC in Banka in August 2022 but did not get any salary since then. She was feeling low and depressed because of this,” Rani’s brother Raja Kumar, who is currently doing MBBS, told reporters.

Attempts to contact deputy chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who has the health department also with him, were not successful.

Additional chief secretary of the health department Pratyaya Amrit, Banka district magistrate Anshul Kumar and civil surgeon Ravindra Narayan did not respond to calls and messages on the issue.

Health department deputy secretary Shailesh Kumar received a call from this newspaper, expressed ignorance about the suicide and assured that he would enquire into it.

When contacted, Jamui station house officer (SHO) Rajiv Kumar Tiwari told The Telegraph: “We are considering the death of the doctor as a suicide. Further investigations are going on. We have not recovered any suicide note so far.”

Indian Medical Association (IMA) Bihar unit action panel convener Dr Ajay Kumar enquired into the matter. “The doctors posted in Banka revealed that her (Rani’s) pay slip was not being readied since she had joined APHC Khesar and was not being paid her salary. She ended her life at her home in such a situation. It is an unfortunate incident which also reveals the professional pressures on the doctors,” he said.

“She had first joined the Bihar government service in 2021 and was sent to an interior location in the Banka district. She resigned the same year. She again decided to join the service in 2022 and was posted at APHC Khesar,” he added.

Ajay, a former chief of the Bihar Health Services Association, said that the young doctor had once tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists while studying at Narayan Medical College and Hospital at Jamuhar in Rohtas district.

“The pressure related to studies, profession, duty and career is making doctors mentally unstable. There is a need for steps to ensure their mental and physical well-being. We also need to check whether the deceased doctor received medical counselling when she attempted suicide while in college,” Ajay added.

Medical fraternity sources said that doctors not getting a salary for months after joining a new place has a corruption angle too as the officialswho make pay slips and do paperwork demand a bribe to start it.