Kerala's Kollam has the highest suicide rate amongst Indian cities: NCRB report

• Four metro cities, together, reported almost 35.5% of the total suicides from 53 mega cities.
• Kollam city followed by Asansol reported the highest suicides rate of 43.9 and 38.5 respectively.
• Delhi reported the highest number of suicides among union territories.

Four metropolitan cities — Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai — accounted for 35.5% of the total suicides reported from 53 mega cities in 2021, according to a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.

Cities also ranked high in suicide rate — the number of suicides per one lakh people – at 16. This is higher than the all-India suicide rate, which was 12.

The city with the highest suicide rate is Kollam in Kerala with a suicide rate of 43.9; followed by Asansol in West Bengal with 38.5.

A total of 25,891 suicides were reported in the 53 mega cities of the country. A city which has a population of more than a million is considered as a mega city.

Source: NCRB report

Five states account for half of the country’s suicides

Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru have shown a significant decline in the cases in 2021 as compared to 2020. However, the number of suicides from Mumbai increased by 12%, from 1,282 suicides to 1,436 suicides.

Maharashtra reported the most sucide cases at 22,207, followed by 18,925 suicides in Tamil Nadu and 14,965 suicides in Madhya Pradesh.

Five states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka — accounted for 50.4% of the total suicides in the country.

And, 49.6% of suicides were reported from the remaining 23 states and eight union territories. Delhi, which is the most-populous union territory, has reported the highest number of suicides among UTs.

Telangana reported the highest increase in the suicides by 26%, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Puducherry by 23.5% each.

Family problems and illness are the major reasons

According to the NCRB report, family problems and illness were the major causes of this extreme step — accounting to 33.2% and 18.6% of total suicides respectively.

The next on the list is addiction to drugs and alcohol. Multiple reasons around financial problems like poverty, bankruptcy, unemployment, professional career problems together accounted for almost 10% of the total suicides in India. Whereas, affairs of the heart like love and marriage related issues accounted for over 5%.

Causes are unknown for 9.7% of suicides, and another 9% fall under ‘other causes’.


The age groups between 18-30 years and 30-45 years accounted to 34.5% and 31.7% of suicides, respectively.

As many as 10,000 farmers ended their lives in 2021, accounting for 6.6% of total suicides victims in the country.

West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Lakshadweep and Puducherry reported zero suicides of farmers or agricultural labourers.

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