12-yr-old’s suicide: HC raps police, orders FIR

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court directed the city police to register an FIR against the teachers of a private school after a 12-year-old girl killed herself in December last year, allegedly after she was repeatedly scolded in school.

The girl’s mother, in her plea, said her daughter had written a “suicide note” on both her palms, which said the news of her suicide must reach her school, before she hanged herself in her room.

In the hight court, the mother sought an independent enquiry into the case after the police allegedly refused to register an FIR in the case. The court transferred the case to the crime branch.

While also directing the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) of the concerned area to file a status report in the case, Justice Najmi Waziri said that “the young girl must have been troubled immensely and persistently so as to take the extreme step of ending her life”.

“Ordinarily, a child of such tender age would not even contemplate committing suicide. The death was unnatural, yet despite her aforesaid mentioned inscriptions, Delhi police had found nothing worthwhile or incriminating to even register an FIR or to initiate any investigation in the matter,” the court said it its order passed on February 11.

The court also came down heavily on the inaction of the police and said, “It is rather odd that even in peculiar circumstances of this tragic case, when the police had taken over two months’ time to reconsider its position and when this petition was listed thrice over, it found nothing worthwhile for registering an FIR.”

According to the advocate, her daughter had been asking to be shifted from the school for nearly three months before the incident but as the academic session was to end soon, she decided to wait.

On December 1, 2018, when the mother had gone out for work, the girl allegedly hanged herself in her room.

“My daughter always used to tell me to change the school because the teachers do not behave nicely with her,” her mother said.

The matter would be now heard on April 9.