After 59 Suicides Hit Five-Year High, CRPF Sets Up DG-Led Core Group
New Delhi: Faced with a five-year peak in suicides among its personnel, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has set up a 10-member high-level “core group” of senior officers to examine self-harm cases in a structured way, look for recurring risk factors and recommend stronger preventive action across the force.
The decision comes as the country’s largest Central Armed Police Force, with an estimated strength of about 3.25 lakh personnel, grapples with a worrying rise in deaths by suicide. Official figures show 59 such deaths in 2025, the highest annual total since 2021. The force recorded 57 suicides in 2021, 43 in 2022, 57 in 2023 and 46 in 2024. Till the end of May 2026, 19 more deaths by suicide had already been reported.
Across the five-year period from 2021 to 2025, the CRPF registered 262 suicides. More than 77 per cent of these cases, or 202 out of 262, involved personnel who were on duty at the time. The rest occurred while they were on leave. The figures also show that constabulary and other non-gazetted ranks accounted for over 80 per cent of the deaths.
How the new core group will work
The newly constituted group is headed by CRPF Director General G.P. Singh, who is also referred to in the source as GP Singh or Gyanendra Pratap Singh. Its members include senior officers from the force’s major verticals: the Special Directors General for Operations and Administration, the Additional Director General at Headquarters, Inspectors General from Operations, Personnel, Administration and Medical, and two Deputy Inspectors General, including DIG Operations-2 and DIG Welfare, who will serve as the convenor.
The group is scheduled to meet once a month, preferably in the third week, at force headquarters. Each meeting will review self-harm incidents reported during the preceding period. For every case, the head of office or the Commandant of the concerned battalion will have to make a four- to five-slide presentation through video conference. That presentation will have to cover the individual’s background, the circumstances leading to the incident, the action taken by the unit, welfare and medical support extended, the findings of the preliminary inquiry and the specific steps taken to prevent a repeat.
Senior officers in the operational chain of command — the concerned DIG, IG and ADG or SDG — will also join the review process via video conference. The core group has been tasked with assessing each case objectively and suggesting preventive, welfare, administrative and medical measures wherever required. It will also identify broader patterns and recurring risk factors across incidents and propose institutional interventions at the force level. The DIG (Welfare) will coordinate the meetings, compile case details, circulate the agenda and minutes, and keep records of recommendations and follow-up action.
The formation of the group follows a high-level meeting at CRPF headquarters earlier this month, where senior officers discussed the lack of a formal, force-wide mechanism for examining such deaths beyond the handling done at individual unit level.
NHRC steps in
The move also comes shortly after the National Human Rights Commission took suo motu cognisance of media reports about the rising number of suicides in the force. On August 14, the NHRC issued notices to the Union Home Secretary and the CRPF Director General, seeking a detailed report within two weeks. In its observation, the Commission said that if the reported figures were correct, they raised serious concerns about the right to life of personnel serving in the country’s largest Central Armed Police Force.
Why the issue has become urgent
CRPF personnel remain under sustained operational pressure. Officials estimate that at any given time, 95 to 97 per cent of the force’s operational strength is deployed across the country on counter-insurgency, counter-terror, anti-Naxal and law-and-order duties. Earlier assessments and official discussions have repeatedly pointed to a cluster of stress factors: long separation from families, difficulty in maintaining work-life balance, personal and domestic troubles, financial strain and the cumulative impact of continuous hard duties.
The force has already tried a range of measures to address these pressures. These include mental-health awareness programmes, financial literacy initiatives, informal chaupal-style interactions, standard operating procedures to spot behavioural warning signs such as sudden aggression, repeated leave requests, debt-related indicators or addiction to online gaming, company-level welfare committees and interviews of personnel after they return from leave. Officials have said that efforts to protect the physical and mental well-being of troops are ongoing.
By creating a standing, DG-led review mechanism, the CRPF is moving away from a system that dealt with such cases mainly at the unit level after the fact. The new arrangement is designed to bring greater scrutiny, ensure accountability, and help the force identify common triggers that may not be visible when incidents are examined in isolation.
The monthly review process will now be watched closely by the force leadership, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the NHRC, especially because the suicide figures have fluctuated over the past five years without showing a clear downward trend. For the CRPF, which remains the country’s principal internal security force and carries the heaviest deployment burden in some of the most demanding operational environments, the new core group is an acknowledgment that the human cost of that burden needs sustained attention at the highest level.
