Odisha Crime Branch to probe into OUAT student suicide case

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, May 27:

Barely a week after the parents of Kumari Suchita, a student of Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT), who had reportedly committed suicide on November 18 last year, alleged that their daughter was murdered, the Odisha government today ordered a Crime Branch probe into the case.

Suchita’s mother Dr Mudrika Tiwari had earlier alleged that her daughter has not committed suicide rather she has been murdered.

Suchita’s father Harendra Kumar had demanded a CBI probe into the matter. The deceased parents had also accused Khandagiri police of not investigating the case properly.

“Suchita was upset about something after she returned from the Fourth International Rice Congress in Bangkok. She, however, didn’t say what was bothering her. I think something happened on that trip which disturbed her. I strongly suspect that she came to know about something illegal related to the four professors and her colleague who had accompanied her,” Dr Mudrika had said to media persons on May 22.

The parents however, had ruled out the possibility that their daughter was sexually harassed on the trip.

They had alleged it was a cold-blooded murder and some influential persons were behind the heinous act.

It is to be noted that Suchita, a fifth year M Sc student of Agronomy in OUAT, committed suicide on November 18, 2014. She was rushed to Capital Hospital where doctors declared her brought dead.

Khandagiri police later registered a U/D case (unnatural death) in this regard.

The college had also formed its own inquiry committee, which, in its report, had stated it a case of suicide.