Days after charred remains of a 19-year-old female college student from Odisha’s Kendrapara district were retrieved from her house; police on Sunday claimed to have solved the case with the arrest of the victim’s ex-boyfriend on the charge of driving her to commit self-immolation through mental and sexual harassment.
The shocking incident took place in Kathiapada village under the Pattamundai (Rural) police station area on 6 August as the victim allegedly immolated herself at her house following her former boyfriend’s threat to upload her intimate photographs on social media.
The accused, Pramod Behera, named in the FIR lodged by the victim’s father has been arrested. He is accused of blackmailing the victim with obscene video clips as a result of which she took the extreme step, said Kendrapara Superintendent of Police, Siddharth Kataria.
Booked under Sections 296 (obscene act), 75 (sexual harassment), 78 (stalking) and 108 (abetment of suicide) of the BNS and Sections 66-E and 67-A of the IT Act, he is being forwarded to court later today, he said.
Coming as it does close on the heels of two such incidents, the death of the student triggered a statewide outrage. While a 20-year-old female student of FM College in Balasore died two days after immolating herself on the college campus on July 12 during treatment at AIIMS-Bhubaneswar, a 15-year-old girl from the Balanga area of the Puri district also died of burns on 2 August.
Though preliminary investigation found it to be a foolproof case of suicide, we did not rule out the possibility of a foul play by the parents of the deceased. However, further investigation elicited clinching proof against the deceased’s ex-boyfriend. Obscene clips of the deceased were retrieved from the arrested person’s mobile phone, confided a police official.
The woman’s father earlier claimed that his daughter took the extreme step after the police refused to accept the complaint in this regard about six months ago.
Meanwhile, the mother of the arrested accused also alleged that it was a case of honour killing as the girl’s parents stubbornly opposed the marriage on the ground that the boy hailed from poor economic background. The parents eliminated their daughter to keep the honour of the family intact and falsely implicated Pramod for abetting to suicide.
The family members of the accused besides locals from his native village staged sit-in near the police station with Behera’s family members threatening to commit suicide right at the agitation spot. Apprehending trouble, police deployment has been beefed up at the site to avert occurrence of any untoward incident.