"I cannot fathom why he took the extreme step after taking on the disease for 18 years," said Pune-based medical oncologist Dr Anantbhushan Ranade hearing of
Himanshu Roy's suicide. He had been treating the cop for two years. On Friday, it was not just Roy's family, but also his team of doctors who were left shellshocked by Roy's final act.
Merely four days ago, they had told him he could take a break from chemotherapy and targeted therapy sessions that he had been undergoing since the cancer relapsed two years ago.
"Sometime on Monday afternoon, I told him his PET scan reports looked positive. I told him the therapies were working and we had a chance to defeat the disease. I had told him he would be taken off treatment for a while," Dr Ranade told TOI, adding, "I have not seen a bigger fighter."
Roy was struck by the disease in 2000, when he was detected with renal cancer. After a radical nephrectomy, he went on to live a normal life with only one kidney. His colleagues recall how he went on to crack some of the biggest cases despite this. The disease returned sometime in 2016 and spread in his body.
Roy even went to
Portugal last year to undergo radiotherapy that he believed would have a good outcome. A therapy plan was prepared at
Nashik's HCG Manavta Centre. He received treatment in Pune and Mumbai.
Numbers suggest Roy's case is not as uncommon. At least 62 people in the country take their lives every day, while not being able to cope with a terminal or chronic ailment. As per 2015 statistics from the
NCRB, illness drove over 22,000 people to suicide, the second commonest cause after family problems. "There is a need in cancer patients to be screened for anxiety and depression. Particularly, when an individual has lived a long period after diagnosis and the disease comes back," said Dr Mary Ann Muckaden, head of palliative medicine,
Tata Memorial Hospital.