Kochi, April 1: C.V. Thomas, 85, hanged himself in his residence at Thrissur yesterday. In a note strapped around his neck, he recalled a Malayalam adage: "Bondage was worse than death. Let this fate not befall any other." 

Three years ago, Kerala High Court had turned down the retired headmaster's sensational petition to exercise his right to die. 

Thomas Master, who claimed to have fulfilled his obligations in life, wanted to end his life at a time of his choice and donate his organs. He also pleaded that the government start suicide clinics attached to each district hospital. 

The court rejected his plea, relying on a Supreme Court verdict that there was no legal sanction for artificial death, voluntary or involuntary. Such deaths would be construed as suicide under the existing laws, it said. 

Thomas wanted to challenge the verdict but gave up the idea because an appeal could be filed only in the Supreme Court, far away in New Delhi. He had also toyed for some time with the idea of launching an indefinite fast in front of the state secretariat after his fellow crusader, B.K. Pillai of Kottayam, died before completing his legal battle. 

Pillai had died a destitute, and Thomas never wanted to meet his fate. He held that a man should have the freedom to choose the time, place and mode of his death for an honorable exit from life after accomplishing his worldly ends. 

He cited the ancient Indian concepts of samadhi and nirvana, which, according to him, were nothing but voluntary termination of life. He believed that the distinction between suicide and voluntary death was lost due to the influence of the Anglo-Saxon judicial system and western jurisprudence, which were innocent of Indian customs and cultural practices. 

Thomas, who retired as headmaster of the Pavaratty lower primary school, leaves behind his wife Aleyamma, also a retired teacher, a son and a daughter. 

His body was laid to rest at St Joseph Church cemetery at Pavaratty - in a marked departure from the convention of burying suicide victims in a corner of the cemetery. 

Sociologists have viewed increasing pleas for voluntary death as an offshoot of the problems faced by a growing population of the elderly. Kerala had 2.6 million senior citizens according to the 1991 census. A study estimated that this would increase to 7.2 million by 2021. 

The management of the elderly has not been easy, particularly with the collapse of the joint family system and emigration of the young to greener pastures. The major problem faced by the aged is the diseases plaguing them in their twilight years. 

While Thomas had lost the impetus to live, Pillai was frustrated with the diseases plaguing him after he retired from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore. The lack of sufficient income and absence of any close relatives to look after him had prompted him to move court.

Advocate Vincent Panikkulangara, who had taken up Thomas's case in 1998, said he has been flooded with requests from elderly for getting legal sanction to die. 

Three others have approached the court after Thomas's petition was dismissed, with the argument that they had the right to plan their exit from life to avoid the trauma of disability and dependence on others. They had argued that the right to plan "one's death, like that of one's life, was an inalienable right of a citizen". 

Though Kerala tops the country in number of suicides, no study has been carried out about the incidence of voluntary death among the aged. Nothing came of a World Health Organization plan to undertake a sample study to evaluate their health status to create a cost-effective model for the prevention and treatment of diseases among the elderly.