Dr RS Sharma, a cardiologist from Madhya Pradesh and a professor in Government Medical College in Jabalpur have got a patent for an unusual invention— a suicide-proof ceiling fan.

Intellectual Property of India has granted patent to Dr Sharma on August 1, 2019, six years after he invented the suicide-proof ceiling fan. Dr Sharma calls his fan "a simple machineequipped by using simple common sense."

Dr Sharma said to TOI that the inspiration came from a real-life experience when a teenaged boy in his neighborhood committed suicide after failing the Class 12 examination. His devastated father kept on cursing the day when he replaced the table fan with a ceiling fan in his room.That incident lead the doctor to think about how to design a ceiling fan with built-in safety features so that it won’t be used as a death tool. One week of hard thinking and several trips to the welders and mechanics, Sharma came up with a solution to this.

Sharma explained that the device has a hollow metal tube inside the fans shaft to which the motor and blades are attached. Attached to the shaft are four heavy springs which are designed to take an additional weight of 25 kg besides the motor and the blades. The moment the weight limit exceeds, the springs uncoils and leads to a soft landing of the person without stretching of the neck or straining the noose.

Dr Sharma has also attached a siren which starts booming on shaft displacement and will alert the people present nearby. He further said that he will upgrade the device and apart from a soft landing and siren going off, the device will also send alerts on the mobile phones of the concerned people and authorities.

He also said that this fan would hardly cost Rs 500 and will further become cheap if commercially produced on a large scale. Dr Sharma’s intention were not monetary benefit, but government should take steps and make it mandatory for fan manufacturers same as the pressure release valve is mandatory in pressure cookers. This fancan become a breakthrough in suicide prevention of young generation.