What Teen Thrashed Over Language Row Told His Father Before Suicide

When Arnav Khaire, 19, returned home earlier than usual on Tuesday afternoon, he spoke to his father on the phone, and kept mumbling - "They beat me up".

Hours later, when Jitendra Khaire arrived, his son's room was bolted. Along with neighbours, he broke down the door to see his son hanging.

Arnav had told his father that he was assaulted on a crowded local train for not speaking in Marathi when he had asked a passenger to move forward in Hindi.

"Brother, please move forward, I am being pushed," Arnav reportedly told a man in front of him in Hindi. Instantly, a group turned to him and one of the men slapped him hard. "Don't you know how to speak Marathi? Are you ashamed to speak Marathi?" they demanded, and allegedly rained blows on him.

The first-year science student was so traumatised that he rushed out at the next stop, took another train to his college, and then went home without attending any class.

"My son left for college in the morning in a crowded train, where the usual pushing and shoving happened inside the compartment. He told me that he asked someone to move forward. He kept repeating that they told him 'Are you ashamed of speaking in Marathi?'," Jitendra Khaire told reporters.

"I asked him, 'Did they beat you a lot?' He said, 'Yes Papa, there were many of them and they scared me badly. I was so frightened'," Khaire quoted his son as saying on the phone.

The encounter left him feeling terrified and nauseous, so much that he exited at the very next station, Thane, instead of riding all the way to his college.

Arnav later took a train to Mulund and reached his college. But he felt in no state to attend any lecture. He went home and told his father about the assault on the phone.

"The father sensed fear and tension in his voice. On returning home from work later that evening, he found the door closed. He broke down the door with the help of neighbours, and found his son hanging with a blanket around his neck," Kalyanji Gete, Assistant Commissioner of Police, told PTI.

Jitendra Khaire registered a police complaint based on which an Accidental Death Report was registered. No arrests have been made so far.

This is the latest incident of violence in Mumbai and its neighbouring regions over the Marathi vs Hindi row. Last month, a passenger aboard a Mumbai-bound Air India flight forced another flyer to speak in Marathi.

Arnav Khaire's tragic story comes in the middle of investigations into two other student suicides - one in Delhi by a school boy allegedly harassed by his teachers and another in Jaipur by a Class 4 girl who was allegedly bullied by her classmates.