St Columba’s student’s suicide: Teachers questioned, CCTV clip shows accused speaking to boy in drama class, say cops

At the gates of the school, the protesters set up a makeshift altar where certificates, medals and trophies won by the boy were displayed.

The brother said that the police will conduct a handwriting analysis of the suicide note left behind by the boy by comparing it with his handwriting samples. “We are ready to provide them with all his notebooks … But the police are yet to collect the samples from us. They should conduct the investigation more aggressively,” said the 20-year-old.

Meanwhile, the police said that they were reviewing the footage of CCTV cameras installed in the school. An officer said that the relevant parts of the footage, which captured moments from the dramatics class, have been accessed, adding that the boy can be seen speaking with his teacher in it, while other students stand around them. “The audio is not clear, but the teacher can be seen talking to the boy. The sequence of events is being matched with the statements of students that were recorded earlier,” the officer said.

The officer also said that three out of the four teachers named in the FIR, registered in the case, had been called in for questioning. According to the police, each of them was questioned for at least two hours. “The teachers denied that they had harassed the student and said they were following the due process in the classroom,” said a senior police officer.

The boy’s father, on the other hand, claimed that he had seen another student seemingly accompanying his son at the metro station where he took his own life. “At that time, my son’s post-mortem was being conducted. So I wasn’t in a state of mind to notice whether the boy was wearing the same uniform or not,” he said.

Present at the protest site was Deepshikha Mishra, the parent of another St. Columba’s student. She had travelled in the same e-rickshaw as the deceased before his death. The boy’s father asked her: “Could you please tell me if anyone else was with him in the e-rickshaw? What did he tell you before you left?” Mishra struggled to remember if there was anyone with the boy, but told the father that his son looked extremely shaken and distressed when she spoke to him.

“His friends have told me that he had told the teachers to stop tormenting him as he was getting suicidal thoughts,” the father also claimed.

“We always saw that he was more interested in extra-curriculars…there was very little pressure from my parents on him to do better in school,” the deceased’s brother said.

The brother, a BBA final-year student, said he understood how pedantic their school was once he entered college. “I met several people from equally prestigious schools…not one of them had stories about teachers threatening rustication over minor faults. Of course, they would get punished…but never heard them saying that their parents were called to school. They had fun, and were never threatened,” he recalled.

The brother, who plans to donate to charities and support NGOs once he began working, said that the family was working on naming a school in their native village after the deceased.

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