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RAIPUR: Terrified of being strip searched, a Class 10 examinee hanged herself in a village in Chhattisgarh’s Jashpur on Monday.

“I will die if this were to happen to me,” the 16-year-old tribal girl had told her brother on March 1, while narrating how two girls and a boy from her school were forced to undress and were searched for ‘chits’ just minutes before they entered the exam hall. She was found dead on March 4.

Jashpur collector Nilesh Kshirsagar has ordered an enquiry into the matter but no case had been registered till Wednesday evening. Statements of the principal and students needed to be recorded, but the administration doesn’t want to disturb children during their board exams, said an official.

The alleged strip search took place at Pandhrapath examination centre in Jashpur on March 1, when students sat for their first paper of the Class X board. Flying squad members were apparently ‘suspicious’ of three students and took the girls and a boy to different rooms to allegedly strip search them. The squad found a chit on the boy and he was rusticated. The girls came out clean in the search but told friends they felt humiliated beyond description.

The 16-year-old had heard this and was mortified, said her family. When she returned home, she looked very disturbed. Her brother asked if something was bothering her. According to the brother, she replied: “I will die. Girls were made to undress on the pretext of checking.”

When he tried to dig deeper, she said she was too embarrassed to share the details. “But I will die,” she kept repeating. Her family assumed she had not done well in her exam and scolded her for not concentrating on studies, but she kept quiet for the next two days.

On March 3, she disappeared from the house. Her family looked around but in vain. The next day, a villager found her body hanging from a tree in a nearby forest.

Collector Kshirsagar said she wasn’t among those searched at the examination centre. “The motive for the suicide isn’t clear. We aren’t sure if she was disturbed due to the event,” he added.

The school principal confirmed the incident and said he had seen the two girls being taken to a room. Nearly 1-2 hours of exam time was wasted as the team kept shifting students from one room to another, which created lot of pressure on them, he said.

The other students are disturbed by reports of the strip search and the suicide.

Read this report in Bengali

