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Schoolgirl’s death sparks row

DH News Service Chennai:

More than ten days have passed since a Plus 2 student of a girls school in Omalur in Salem district was found dead, leading to vandalisation of the school and its consequent closure.

More than ten days have passed since a Plus 2 student of a girls school in Omalur in Salem district was found dead, leading to vandalisation of the school and its consequent closure. But the cause of her death still remains a mystery. The school is set to reopen on December 1, with women police providing security to girls. This shows there is more to the death than meets the eye.

Sukanya, a student of Fatima Girls Senior Secondary School, went missing on November 16. Her parents from a village in adjacent Dharmapuri district rushed to the school the next day. But her body was fished out of an open well in the school premises only the next day, after her parents had gone back home.

Alleging that Sukanya’s was the latest in a series of unexplained deaths in the school in the last few years, locals vandalised the school the day her body was found. Sensing the public outrage, the state government ordered an enquiry by the revenue divisional officer. The RDO, Shanthi, has quoted girls as having told her that while cleaning the school premises, they came across blood stains on the floor of a class room. Though preliminary post-mortem report has concluded it is a case of death by drowning, whether Sukanya was raped or not will be known only after a detailed examination by a forensic lab in Salem.

After receiving a complaint from the girl’s parent’s, the police have registered a case under section 306 of the IPC (abetment of suicide of a major), with the FIR naming school headmistress, hostel warden and physics teacher as prime suspects.

The recovery of beer bottles and used and unused condoms in the bushes around the school campus has added to the mystery. The police said that the peon and watchman have been arrested and outside priests are also the likely suspects.