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Kerala health minister orders probe into 28-year-old medical student’s suicide
The minister ordered the director of the woman and child welfare department to probe the reasons behind the suicide and submit a report as soon as possible
Kerala health minister Veena George ordered a probe into the 28-year-old medical student’s suicide on Wednesday following claims by the victim’s family that she was depressed over high demands of dowry by the relatives of a man she was slated to marry.
The minister ordered the director of the woman and child welfare department to probe the reasons behind the suicide and submit a report as soon as possible.
The deceased, a PG student of surgery at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, was found unconscious in her apartment in the state capital and rushed to a hospital where she was declared dead on Tuesday.
An officer at the Medical College police station, where a case of unnatural death has been registered and a probe is underway, said the young doctor had injected herself with a high dose of anesthesia drugs which led to her death. A suicide note has been found in which she reportedly wrote, “Everyone wants money and money triumphs everything.”
The police officer, on condition of anonymity said, “We have taken the statements of her family members in which they have talked about demands of dowry made by the family of a doctor who had proposed to the 28-year-old. We are verifying these claims. We will also take statements from the male doctor and his family members in the next few days.”
P Sathidevi, chairperson of the state women’s commission said, “The death of Dr Shahana is indeed very tragic. A senior doctor at the same medical college where she studied approached her family with the offer of marriage in which she was also interested. Her mother told us that his family made big demands of dowry including 75 sovereigns of gold which the family could not meet. Such demands are illegal under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. The marriage was later called off due to disagreements over dowry.”
“We certainly find that a case can be booked for abetment to suicide as well as relevant sections under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. We suspect that she took her own life after being heartbroken over the marriage being called off,” Sathidevi told reporters.
