Vijayawada: Doubts expressed over student's suicide

VIJAYAWADA: The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has considered the suicide of a class X student K. Sai Charan suo moto. Charan allegedly hanged himself on February 15, in an unauthorised hostel of Ravindra Bharathi School in Praja Sakthi Nagar of Vijayawada.

The SCPCR made a surprise visit to the school on Friday; but the district education officer did not attend though he had received prior intimation. After inspecting the crime scene, SCPCR in-charge chairperson S. Balaraju, and member S. Muralidhar Reddy expressed doubts regarding the incident, unsatisfied with explanation given by the school. They found that the hostel, which was being run on the 4th and 5th floors of the school building itself, was unauthorised, but it still housed 22 girls and 66 boys. He wondered how the school had any clearances, without having a playground, firefighting equipment or proper maintenance of infrastructure. The school management has been unreachable to the Commission, and both deans said that they did not have the chairman’s contact number.

Balaraju said that the school staff had tried to wash of their hands off the incident by shifting the body out of the school without informing the police. The commission members also encountered discrepancies in the timings mentioned by the school staff and the warden. Additionally, the hostel warden S. Naveen said that the boy had hung himself using a towel. However, district child protection officer Ch. Vijay Kumar observed that there were no marks of the towel on the ceiling fan, as no dust had been cleared off.

Machavaram inspector K. Umamaheswara Rao said that they were waiting for the post-mortem report. He said they were questioning the staff about the removal of the body. The parents of Sai Charan have not made any allegations or demanded a probe into the incident.