A 13-year-old student died by suicide by jumping off the roof of her three-storey school building in Maharashtra on Friday morning.
Aarohi Deepak Bidlan, a resident of Mastagad in Jalna, was studying in Class 8 at the CTMK Gujarati School in the district, and her father has alleged that she may have been "tortured" by her teachers.
Aarohi's father, who is a sanitation worker at a private hospital, said he received a call on Friday from the school informing him that she had jumped from the roof. He stressed that the teenager had shown no signs of distress at home and had left for school as usual.
"I received a call from the school that my child had... done something like that. I went to the school and was told she was taken to a hospital. There, the doctors said that there are very few chances of her surviving. She was then referred to the civil hospital, where she was declared dead," Deepak Ashok Bidlan, Aarohi's father, said.
"She was fine when she left home, the teachers must have tortured her," he added.
Inspector Sandeep Bharti of the Sadar Bazar police said an investigation is underway to find out the cause of the suicide.
"Around 7:30 am to 8:00 am, the girl died by suicide by jumping from the third floor of the school building," he said.
Pressed on the father blaming the teachers, Bharti said he hasn't made an official statement to the police about that yet.
On the alleged harassment by the teachers, the inspector said, "Nothing of that sort has come before us yet. The parents have not given any statement until now."
This is the fourth student suicide because of alleged harassment that has come to light this month.
On Tuesday, a Class 10 student in one of Delhi's leading schools died by suicide by jumping from a Metro station and left behind a note in which he blamed his teachers.
In the note, 16-year-old Shourya Patil wrote, "Sorry, mummy, aapka itni bar dil toda, ab last bar todunga. School ki teachers ab hai hi aise, kya bolu (Sorry, mummy, I broke your heart many times, and I am doing it for the last time. This is how the teachers in the school are, what do I say?)"
The boy's father filed a case in which he accused three teachers and the headmaster of St Columba's School of mentally harassing his son so much that he was forced to take his own life.
The school has suspended the headmaster and the three teachers.
A 17-year-old Class 11 student in Madhya Pradesh's Rewa died by suicide pn November 16 after alleging that a male teacher physically assaulted her.
Earlier this month, a nine-year-old girl in Jaipur jumped off the fourth floor at her school. The Class-4 student allegedly faced relentless bullying in her school for several months, including verbal abuse from her classmates. She had approached her class teacher five times and sought help but was not given any.
