A 32-year-old sharecropper hanged himself in Ausgram's Purbachati village on Wednesday morning, the third suicide in the drought-ridden region in less than two weeks.

The news spread like wildfire through the scorched fields when, just 5km away, Trinamool Congress leaders Partha Chatterjee and Sisir Adhikary were consoling the families of the earlier two victims, Jitu Bagdi and Yunus Seikh.

Gosai Patra quietly walked out of home at dawn and hanged himself from a tree in the courtyard around 6am on Wednesday. His second child was born just two days ago.

Villagers and relatives had kept the news from Gosai's widow, who is still in hospital with the newborn, until Adhikary landed up at her bedside with a clutch of supporters to 'break the news to her'.

Gosai had taken a loan of Rs 14,000 to cultivate 2.5 bighas. Due to the drought and the lack of irrigation, he could sow crops on barely 25 cottahs. That, too, was destroyed due to lack of rain, said his brother Goutam, adding: "He feared that he wouldn't be able to feed his family."

The administration is still unwilling to acknowledge the three suicides were drought-related. On Gosai's death, district magistrate Onkar Singh Meena told TOI: "His economic condition was not good. His family members are NREGA workers and his mother is a panchayat pensioner. I've asked Ausgram police to conduct an investigation. BDO Sudhir Majhi has been sent to the house to provide help."

Leader of opposition Chatterjee and Adhikary (the Contai MP and a Union minister of state) garlanded Gosai's body at Burdwan Medical College Hospital in the afternoon before the post-mortem.

The Trinamool leaders, along with MLA Swapan Debnath, visited the houses of Jitu Bagdi in Karotia and Yunus Seikh in Basantapur village under Ausgram-1 block. They went to the scorched paddy fields, provided some help to the three families and promised the villagers further aid after returning to Kolkata and discussing it with party chief Mamata Banerjee.