Jaipur girl commits suicide after passport verification not cleared

Nineteen-year-old Nisha Hiranandani committed suicide here on Monday evening by consuming poison.

Nineteen-year-old Nisha Hiranandani committed suicide here on Monday evening by consuming poison. She was depressed after the SHO of the local police station allegedly refused to complete her passport verification process.

The incident interrupted the proceeding at the Assembly on Tuesday after the Opposition BJP raised the issue during zero hour and demanded immediate action. State Home Minister Shanti Dhariwal said a probe had been ordered and the officer in question,SHO Veer Singh,transferred to the reserve police lines.

Nishas father Harish Hiranandani performed the last rites on Tuesday afternoon. Her family and friends said she was engaged to an NRI in Spain and was to wed in the near future. For more than 20 days she regularly visited the police station with all necessary documents,but the SHO remained non-committal. He neither rejected the application nor assented to it. Finally,on Monday the SHO rejected her application,which led her to take the extreme step, said Hiranandani. Nisha was a student of Rajasthan University.

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According to her neighbour,Suryaprakash Sharma,Nisha was engaged three months ago on the condition that the wedding was to be held in Spain and that she settles there permanently. They are not a well-off family and used to manage day-to-day expenditure on the earnings of her younger brother,Ashish (18). I had never seen the family happier after the engagement only to have it all shattered like this, Sharma said.

He added that on hearing the news,family and friends gathered on Tuesday to stage an agitation at the police station.

Sharma said Nisha had applied for a passport under the Tatkal scheme a month ago and was prepared with all the necessary paperwork. Sharma added that Singh and other police personnel were rude to Nisha.

Jaipur Inspector General of Police B L Soni on Tuesday said an FIR has been lodged against Shiprapath police station SHO Veer Singh.

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The girl committed suicide on Monday evening by consuming poison. Her family and friends staged an agitation at the police station, Soni said. He said Singh has been charged with abetting suicide and has been transferred. The Gandhinagar circle officer is conducting the investigation under the Superintendent of Polices supervision, Soni added.

The SHO has been pulled up for not acting on the application for more than 20 days. Though Tatkal passport character verification is a discretionary power,the SHO could have rejected the application in the beginning instead of making the family run around, Jaipur (East) SP B G Joseph said.