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Kathmandu, Mar 10: Five days after three of his associates died in a helicopter crash in eastern Nepal, a Russian engineer working for the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) killed himself, apparently due to depression.

Evegeny Alexandrov, a 50-year-old Russian engineer hired by UNMIN for “air service support in Nepal,” hanged himself in the Kapan area of Kathmandu valley on Saturday, the police said.

Alexandrov and five other foreign nationals had been living together in Kathmandu, all of them working for the Russian Vertical T helicopter company, which finds itself in the centre of a controversy after the March 3 crash in Bethan in Ramechhap district last week, killing all 10 people on board. The dead included three Russian and Belarus crew members and four UNMIN arms monitors.

The police said the dead man had left a suicide note in Russian, saying he was responsible for his death. The UNMIN remained tight-lipped over the suicide with no official statement issued from its office in the capital.

The agency ran into hostile media criticism in Nepal after the crash when it tried to prevent journalists from nearing the chopper wreck and even confiscated the tape of a cameraman working for Nepal’s state-owned television station.