Police in Juba said they had registered six cases of deaths under unclear circumstances last week, including four cases of alleged suicide.
Addressing reporters on Friday, National Police Spokesperson Maj Gen Daniel Justin said: “We have registered some cases whereby we have some cases of people who lost their lives in public places like markets and then we registered like four cases of suicide among them is a student at Upper Nile University.”
He further said they also recorded some criminal cases last week, including a motorbike robbery where the bike owner was shot dead along the Juba-Bor road near the Sherikat area and a Sudanese man found dead near the Juba Bridge.
The police officer pointed out that the Sudanese man’s body was taken to a hospital for postmortem.
For his part, Maj Gen Sadik Ismail Sidigi, Director of Legal Affairs at the National Police Service, blamed some of the suicide cases on excessive consumption of alcohol.
“Young boys are dying as a result of a small alcohol which they call Jena Far. They also call it Shurta Askeriya. Please, this alcohol is very dangerous. This small size is 40 percent alcohol, and now these young boys, when they drink, they don’t eat, so this is what is destroying our younger generation,” Gen Ismail said.
“The worst part of it is, that type of alcohol is very cheap, it goes for SSP 50, and then everyone is able to buy it. And it is very dangerous, and it is being sold in all these small shops, even at tea places,” he added.