Bhubaneswar: A 17-year-old boy allegedly committed suicide by consuming poison unable to bear the humiliation and harassment at his school in Odisha’s Jajpur district.
According to reports, Ashish Kumar Panda, a Class XII student of a residential school in Jajpur, allegedly consumed poison in his home Monday evening after he was accused of stealing the mobile phone of a hostel inmate.
Ashish was first rushed to a government hospital at Madhuban and later shifted to the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack where he breathed his last on Tuesday night. Following this, his father Banka Behari Panda filed a complaint with the Dharmasala police.
The teenager’s family said that they received a phone call from the Renaissance Higher Secondary School authorities on August 4 morning saying that Ashish had stolen a mobile phone from a hostel roommate.
“We reached the school at about 10 am and our son appeared very stressed and pleaded he was innocent. The school authority directed us to take him home. When we asked them to show us the CCTV footage of our son’s misdeed, they could not show it. We took him home on Sunday,” said his father.
Panda alleged that his son was mentally tortured by the school authorities. “My son could not bear the humiliation and died by suicide,” he said.
