Bhopal Student's "Affront To Prophet" Message Not Linked To Death

Officials tell NDTV it was suicide as he was stressed due to debt, a lot of of which he'd taken from quick-loan apps on his phone

Investigators have found no link between the death of Bhopal engineering student Nishank Rathore — whose body was found on rail tracks last Sunday — and a message about "insult to Prophet" that he'd sent to his father just minutes earlier. He jumped in front of a train due to depression as he was neck-deep in loans taken from instant-loan mobile apps besides other sources, officials told NDTV.

There were fears that it could be yet another murder over support to since-suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma, whose comments about Prophet Mohammed and Islam sparked a violent chain of events. But that's been ruled out. Cyber forensics played a key role in unravelling the case. 

"He might have written the message mentioning 'affront to Prophet' to win the support of Hindu nationalists by portraying himself as a martyr or to get the government's help for his family," a probe official told news agency PTI. Officials told NDTV that he'd been using his phone to search for articles related to the issue.

A traffic camera showed Rathore, 21, on a scooter about half an hour before his father got three back-to-back messages from him. The last message at 5.44 pm, in Hindi, mentioned how certain right-wingers justified murder with the refrain "there is just one punishment for affront to the Prophet -- head severed from the body". He had posted a similar message on his Instagram account too. His body was found at 6.10 pm.