MANGALURU: Nearly a year after Coffee Day founder VG Siddartha committed suicide by jumping off the Netravathi Bridge on NH-66, the authorities have initiated works to prevent suicides on the bridge. The bridge will get a 8-feet-tall barrier that will be fixed on the retaining walls on either side of it in order to deter people from taking the extreme step.
Barriers will also be erected at the median of the bridge that has a gap. The bridge has earned the sobriquet ‘suicide spot’ as many people have jumped from it over the past years. Kankanady Police inspector Ashok confirmed that number of suicides on the spot has gone up.
However, he said it is difficult to provide exact numbers as dead bodies are fished out in areas coming under Pandeshwar or Ullal pol ice station limits. Police sources said that suicides at the spot increased in the last one year after Siddartha incident on June 30, 2019 that made it to the national headlines, also triggering the demand for a suicide barrier from the citizens of Mangaluru. Mangaluru South MLA Vedavyas Kamath took keen interest in the project.