BHUBANESWAR: A 20-year-old student of Fakir Mohan (Autonomous) College is battling for her life at AIIMS Bhubaneswar after setting herself on fire over harassment by her head of department. In a shocking revelation, her father has claimed that college authorities pressured her to withdraw the complaint she had filed with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC).
"My daughter's friends informed me that just a few minutes before she immolated herself, the college principal asked her to meet him. He told her that the internal complaints committee had found all evidence against her and asked her to withdraw the complaint or else she would be rusticated from the college," the girl's inconsolable father told the mediapersons here on Sunday.
"After she lodged a complaint with the ICC against HoD Sameer Sahu, he brought together a few students and started claiming all her allegations against him were fake, following which she was under immense mental stress", he said.
"Principal Dillip Ghosh did not even provide any consolation to my daughter when she went to meet him a day before, for which she took such a drastic step", he added. The girl's father also claimed that Sahu had threatened to fail her in the examinations if she did not agree to his demands.
He had even met Sahu earlier in the year and requested him not to ask his daughter to leave the classroom over low attendance. He said his daughter was very strong, was a master trainer in self-defence, had received disaster management training and was involved in cultural/social activities, acting and writing poems.
The girl, a second-year student of integrated BEd, took the extreme step on the college's premises after 12.30 pm on Saturday. She was immediately rushed to AIIMS in the capital, and her condition remains critical.
Meanwhile, the committee, led by the Director of Higher Education, a senior officer at the joint secretary level and a senior academician, both women, visited FM College on Sunday and launched an investigation into the incident. They questioned the principal and the members of the ICC in connection with the matter.