JAGATSINGHPUR: The drowning death of a 20-year-old girl in Balikuda’s Tentulibellari village took a new turn after her autopsy report revealed that she was nine months pregnant.
On Friday, the body of Pujarani Moharana was found in the village pond. Her family members had claimed that she accidentally slipped and drowned in the water body. They also lodged a complaint with the local police in this connection.
On being informed about the drowning death, police reached Tentulibellari village and sent the girl’s body to the district headquarters hospital (DHH) for postmortem. Sources said during autopsy, it was found that Pujarani was carrying a baby for around nine months. The revelation came as a surprise as the girl was unmarried.
Locals said there was not a single eyewitness when Pujarani drowned in the pond as claimed by her family members. It might be possible that either the girl was killed as part of an attempt to cover up her pregnancy or she took the extreme step fearing the social stigma of being pregnant out of wedlock.
While Pujarani’s family members remained tight-lipped about the incident, Superintendent of Jagatsinghpur DHH Nimain Charan Nayak said, “We have preserved the dead foetus as it is a legal issue. Blood samples have been collected from the baby’s umbilical cord and those will be sent to the forensic laboratory at Bhubaneswar for DNA test as part of police investigation. We have also handed over the girl’s postmortem report to local police.”
Officer-in-charge of Anantapur police outpost Baikuntha Nath Ghadei said, “Basing on the complaint of the girl’s brother, we had registered an unnatural death case. Police came to know about the deceased’s pregnancy from the postmortem report. Investigation is underway to unearth the reason behind the girl’s death.”