Sagar
Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Oct 6: Five months since taking up the Kumari Suchita case, the Crime Branch, too, has not been able to make much headway with the investigation. Suchita, who was an MSc student of OUAT, was found hanging from a ceiling fan at the university hostel November 18 last.
The case was handed over to Crime Branch May 26 after the media and parents of Suchita — Mundrika Tiwari and Harendra Tiwari — demanded that the local police be taken off it.
Now the Tiwaris say the Crime Branch has not informed them anything about the progress of the case and that they are saying they would tell when it’s finished.
Crime Branch additional DG BK Sharma has told Orissa POST that nothing concrete has come up so far that “can be shared with the media”.
In the absence of an FIR, Crime Branch is not liable to file any charge-sheet in the case. However, it can keep the investigation open for as long as it believes something new could be found out.
And Crime Branch will only determine the cause of death but can’t arrest anyone unless the investigating officer comes across incriminating evidence and decide to register an FIR.
According to Srinivas, the legal advisor to Suchita’s parents, the police investigation of the case had some key flaws. “The Khandagiri police didn’t name witnesses to Suchita’s body being taken down although they have claimed to have done so. They also haven’t documented evidence of the crime scene,” Srinivas told Orissa Post.
According to him, the police also failed to conduct a post-mortem examination of sexual organs in the case, which is a must in cases of unnatural death.
“Nothing was done to ascertain whether the deceased was subjected to any sexual assault,” Srinivas added.
Mundrika, Suchita’s mother, believes that her daughter might have been subjected to sexual assault during her Bangkok trip last October, only 18 days before she was found dead. The college officials had organized the trip to attend International Rice Congress. Suchita was one of the two students who were sponsored by the university to participate in the tour along with college staff of the college.
Following the death of Suchita, the college set up an internal enquiry committee led by Dean JML Gulati, and it concluded that she killed herself as she was depressed. The committee said Suchita had been worried as her mother was suffering from cancer.
Mundrika denied she had cancer at a press meeting on May 22. She also denied that the Khandagiri police had recovered a suicide note and claimed that the document said to be recovered were “some pages torn out of Suchita’s dairy”.
Srinivas says the notes from Suchita’s diary don’t indicate why she was taking her life. “Does it say anywhere that she is depressed? No. What it says is that she spoke to mother today, she will be doing this today, etc” Srinivas said. “It’s ridiculous to believe that someone’s to-do list can become a suicide note.”