Telangana engineering student sets herself ablaze fearing coronavirus infection
Victim’s mother Lakshmi says no one was at home when Sravanthi doused herself with kerosene and set herself ablaze.
A 20-year old engineering student in Telangana’s Rajanna Siricilla district committed suicide on Tuesday by setting herself ablaze fearing that she might have contracted Sars-Cov-2 virus, the police said.
The deceased was identified as Dasari Sravanthi, daughter of Dasari Balaiah of Jillella village of Thangallapalli block in the district. She was a B Tech final year student at a private engineering college in Siddipet district.
According to the complaint lodged by the victim’s mother Lakshmi, no one was at home when Sravanthi doused herself with kerosene and set herself ablaze.
“My husband Balaiah went to Muscat long ago, my son Vamsi and I had gone to the fields for work and my father-in-law Rajaiah had gone out for some personal work. When my father-in-law returned home in the afternoon, Sravanthi was burning in flames. By the time my son and I reached home, she was already dead,” Lakshmi said in the complaint, a copy of which was seen by HT.
The police rushed to the village with a fire tender and put out the flames after it was alerted by the villagers. A suicide note was recovered from the house in which Sravanthi said she was suffering from symptoms of cold and fever and feared she might be suffering from coronavirus.
“She suspected that she might have contracted the virus from her co-passengers in the bus in which she used to travel to her college in Siddipet. She asked her brother to take care of parents,” Lakshmi said.
Stating that Sravanthi had not spoken about symptoms before, Lakshmi told the police that there could be some other reason for her suicide and requested a thorough investigation.
Rajanna Siricilla superintendent of police Rahul Hegde told HT that prima facie, it was evident that Sravanthi had committed suicide fearing that she might have contracted Covid-19. “But we have sent the suicide note to the forensic experts to find out whether it was written by Sravanthi herself or fabricated by anybody else. We are also awaiting the autopsy report to know whether she really had any Covid-19 symptoms,” the SP said.
