Nagpur: With 3,146 distressed farmers ending their lives last year, Maharashtra has topped the list of farmland suicides in the country, an activist said on Friday. Citing the latest National Crime Records Bureau report, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) chief Kishore Tiwari said there have been 60,768 farmers' suicides in the state since 1995.

"These are not mere suicides or homicides. It is a genocide perpetrated by the wrong policies of the state government over the years, especially the last 15 years' rule of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party," Tiwari told IANS.