Are we sending our children out to die?
By Our Special Correspondent
Shillong: Dayna M Sangma, 23, a 1st year MBA student in the Amity University Pachgaon, situated on National Highway 8, hanged herself on Tuesday after she was reportedly humiliated by an invigilator, one of the students said.
Dayna the niece of Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma (elder sister’s daughter) was a bright student and got admission in other institutions as well.
A very perturbed Dr Sangma said, “I was the one who insisted that she study in this particular institution as it is close to Delhi and easy to visit when we come down to Delhi. I never imagined that such a horrifying thing would take place.”
Talking to this correspondent, Dr Sangma said there were many indications that his niece was unduly harassed.
“We are not going to exempt post mortem because it is important to get to the root of the matter. Things are not as simple as they appear on the outside. This is the reason why I want our State to set up good, state of the art educational institutions so that our children need not go out and enroll themselves in all kinds of institutions. Our children are racially profiled and often insulted and sneered. This cannot be tolerated,” Dr Sangma asserted.
Dayna Sangma committed suicide by hanging herself in her hostel room in the Amity University Pachgaon after a teacher accused her of cheating and tore her exam paper, police said.
A student from the same university, on condition of anonymity, told a particular news agency that Dayna was writing her examination on Tuesday when a teacher accused her of cheating.
When she protested, the invigilator took her answer sheet and tore it up. Dayna, immediately rushed to her room in the hostel and hanged herself. When her roommate returned she saw her hanging. Teachers tried to downplay the incident.
“We just came to know about the incident, our investigation is on,” a police officer said.
Dayna was an intelligent student, one of her friends said. Another student alleged that many times they were threatened by their teachers with mark cuts and suspension for no reasons.
Meanwhile, police registered a case under Section 306 of IPC (abetment of suicide) in connection with the alleged suicide of Dayna, our Delhi Correspondent adds. Doctors also conducted post mortem on the body and the same was handed over her relatives. Last rites of the body was also held on Wednesday night.
Under the Act, whoever abets any suicide shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine, police said.
The Northeast Support Centre, an NGO dealing with such tragic cases against individuals from the reigon expressed concern over such incident. The circumstances which led the helpless student to such extreme step should be enquired into and the guilty should be brought to book, it said.
“It was an unfortunate incident that she took the extreme step,” said Major Gen (retd) BS Suhag, deputy vice-chancellor of Amity University Haryana.
In another shocking incident Loitam Richard, aged 19 from Manipur, studying Architecture Engineering at Acharya NRV School of Architecture in Bangalore was allegedly beaten to death by senior hostel mates when he switched the channel of the TV while watching an IPL match on the night of April 18 in his hostel.
Sources have revealed that Richard had a tiff with his classmate and some seniors butt in and beat him up severely.
“His head was banged repeatedly against the steel frames of a window. The deformed window frames screams about those horrific last moments Richard went through before his death,” a friend of Richard’s said on condition of anonymity.
The management at Acharya Instititute have tried to wash their hands off the incident by claiming Richard to be a drug abuser and linking his death with the previous minor accident he met few days before that fateful night.
Richard’s parents are insisting that police get to the root of this matter and are moving the Government of Karnataka to treat this matter with the seriousness it deserves.