India has seen over a quarter of a million farmers' suicides between 1995 and 2010 due to debt and bad harvest, reported local daily The Hindu Saturday.

The newspaper quoted the National Crime Records Bureau's latest report as saying 15,964 farmers committed suicide in 2010, which brings the cumulative 16-year total from 1995 to 256,913.

The paper described it as "the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history".

Maharashtra posts a dismal picture with over 50,000 farmers killing themselves in the country's richest State in that period. Close to two-thirds of all farm suicides have occurred in five States: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, according to the report.

The data show clearly that the last eight years were much worse than the preceding eight. As many as 135,756 farmers killed themselves in the 2003-10 period. For 1995-2002, the total was 121,157, according to the report.