Suicide attempt a la ''Sholay''

Fatehabad, Sep 3 (UNI) Apparently taking a cue from the popular suicide bid of Dharmendra in the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay, a sozzled man climbed atop 130-feet-high mobile tower at village Pilimandori in this district early today.

It took combined efforts of the police, fire brigade and BSNL officials the whole day to convince Nathu Ram, the 50-year-old village chowkidar, to climb down.

According to villagers, Nathu, who had consumed liquor, had a tiff with his wife and stomped off to climb up the BSNL tower this morning.

Soon the tipsy man began shouting from the tower-top that he had no one of his own in this world, his wife usually abused him and quarreled with him and that he planned to end his life by jumping off the tower.

Hundreds of people assembled at the site and fire brigade was called in. The district administration officials also rushed to convince him to come down by making appeals from the loudspeaker throughout the day, but Nathu Ram ignored their appeals.

When some fire brigade employees began climbing up to force him to come down, he threatened to jump after pushing them on the ground.

When an official nevertheles continued to climb and reached near him, Nathu Ram climbed further up to the top of the tower and again threatened to jump off.

Late in the evening Rajinder Kumar, an official of the BSNL went up with a mobile phone and told Nathu Ram that his wife wanted to talk to him.

Nathu Ram, who had by then apparently come back to his senses, talked to his wife and other members of his family and when all of them assured him that they would not quarrel with him in future, he climbed down thus ending the day-long drama on a happy note, just like the popular movie.

UNI