Death and violence in Kallakurichi

The unprecedented violence in Kallakurichi over the death of a Class XII student in a private, residential school cannot be seen as an isolated incident. It calls to question several aspects that need to be assessed — how fake news spreads on social media,the role of the police and district administration, the place of schools that run special classes until late at night

An uneasy calm prevails at Kaniyamoor village on the Salem-Chennai national highway in Kallakurichi district. Only a few shops remain open on the busy highway with police pickets deployed on either side, from Chinnasalem till Kallakurichi, the district headquarters.

The signs of violence are apparent from the highway itself — shattered glass, burnt and blackened classrooms, damaged furniture and torched vehicles, including buses, tractor-trailers and two-wheelers, on the sprawling campus of Sakthi Matriculation Higher Secondary School. The school witnessed a riot on an unprecedented scale on July 17 following the death of a Class XII girl student on the school premises on July 13.

Hailing from a neighbouring district, the girl, who was a hostelite, was found dead on the ground floor. Her room in the hostel was on the third floor, and the initial theory doing the rounds, thanks to the police, was that it was most likely a suicide. The police said a school watchman had found the girl lying motionless on the ground around 5.30 a.m. The body was sent for an autopsy to the Kallakurichi Government Medical College and Hospital.

The then Kallakurichi Superintendent of Police, S. Selvakumar, on July 19, read out the suicide note, said to have been written by the girl, to the protesters, in front of the media. This was an attempt to stick to the theory of suicide. He said that in the suicide note, the girl had accused two of her teachers of humiliating her in front of her classmates for not concentrating on studies and hence she was depressed.

However, the girl’s mother refused to accept that she had died by suicide and alleged foul play in her death. She said the handwriting on the suicide note was not her daughter’s. She said she had received a call from the school on July 13 around 6.30 a.m. She was informed that her daughter had sustained injuries from a fall and had been rushed to the Kallakurichi Government Medical College and Hospital. The mother said she received another call in half-an-hour from the same person who informed her that her daughter was dead.

“The doctors at the government hospital said my daughter had been brought dead. However, when I went to the hostel there were no traces of any blood stain on the ground where she was found after her fall,” she said.

Blaming the school administration for the girl’s death and demanding action against it, the parents, accompanied by family members and relatives, resorted to a protest on July 13 in front of the school. The family had refused to accept her body after post-mortem on July 14.