KARACHI: Two classmates of a Hindu dental student have been detained by the police in Pakistan's Sindh province after she was found dead in her hostel room, a media report said on Thursday. Nimrita Chandni, a final-year student of Bibi Asifa Dental College in Larkana district and a social activist, was found lying on a cot by her friends on Monday with a rope tied to her neck.
The two suspects, both classmates of Chandni, were taken into the custody by the police after tracing the call data from the deceased's cell phone, Geo News reported. Her room was locked from inside. Police have not yet ascertained whether she committed suicide or was murdered.
The girl hailed from Ghotki district, which recently witnessed riots after a school principal from the minority Hindu community was booked on charges of alleged blasphemy. Host of pictures and other materials, including exam passes, were found from Chandni's hostel room, the report said.
The laptop of Chandni was also being analysed for possible clues, the report quoted police as saying. The Sindh government on Wednesday requested the Larkana sessions court to conduct a judicial probe into the student's death after pressure from civil society members across the province.
Meanwhile, members of the Hindu community, civil society and political parties have also demanded the formation of a joint investigation team to hold a probe into Chandni's death. Protesters held rallies in Larkana on Wednesday and raised slogans against the dental college administration, demanding justice.
Experts and officials of the medico-legal section of the health department in Karachi believe that the autopsy report carried many flaws and missed key facts. They said that the ligature mark in picture was not due to a dupatta. "The post-mortem findings show suicide but ligature mark shows strangulation," Dawn newspaper quoted a senior official, who wished not to be named, as saying.
In the post-mortem report, time between death and post-mortem was 11-12 hours but the picture appeared to be about 24 hours old because decomposition signs had developed, the report said. The experts said that no comments had been mentioned in the post-mortem report conducted in Larkana about decomposition. Instead, it has been mentioned in the report that the condition of the body was "fresh".