GUWAHATI: A school teacher from Assam, who was allegedly involved in a colleague's murder, committed suicide by slitting his throat with a knife in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district on Wednesday.
The incident was reported from Bagh Jan police station of Doomdooma in the district on Wednesday. The deceased; Rabindra Nath Handique, and two others- Jogen Handique and Munindra Barua, had allegedly murdered Lachit Bailung on June 25.
Jogen Handique is the principal of Bagh Jan Dighol Torrong High School while the victim and the other accused were teachers there.
The police said Rabindra Nath had committed suicide while the two others were being interrogated in connection with Bailung’s murder.
“Based on leads, we had picked up Jogen Handique and Munindra Barua and subjected them to interrogation. On learning about their detention, Rabindra Nath had come to the police station but when he heard the principal narrating details of the murder, the former went out saying he would drink water and committed suicide with a knife behind the police station building,” Tinsukia superintendent of police, Mugdha Jyoti Mahanta, told the New Indian Express.
He said Rabindra Nath was neither an accused nor a suspect until he left. It was only after his departure that the principal revealed that he (Rabindra Nath) was the prime accused. When personnel later went looking for him, they found him dead, Mahanta said.
He also said that Bailung was murdered during a tiff over his charge that the trio had siphoned off money allocated by authorities for construction at the school.
“The construction was taking place under the supervision of the three teachers. Lachit Bailung would always threaten that he would expose them by filing an RTI. So, Barua called him on June 25 and all of them met at a place to settle the issue. However, the meeting soon turned sour as they picked up a quarrel leading to Bailung’s murder,” Mahanta said.
Meanwhile, locals on Wednesday torched Rabindra Nath’s vehicle in protest against Bailung’s murder. They also surrounded the police station demanding that Handique and Barua be handed over to them so that they could deal with them appropriately.