Delta Meghwal case: Charge sheet against three for abetment of suicide

Physical training instructor Vijendra Singh, hostel warden Priya Shukla and her husband Pragya Prateek Shukla charged with abetment of suicide

Three months after the death of 17-year-old Dalit girl Delta Meghwal, Bikaner police have charge-sheeted three people, including Bikaner’s Jain Adarsh Teachers’ Training Institute for Girls Bikaner physical training instructor Vijendra Singh, hostel warden Priya Shukla and her husband Pragya Prateek Shukla for abetment of suicide.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and state PCC chief Sachin Pilot meet Delta Meghwal’s family at Trimohi village. (HT File Photo)

Meghwal, the first Dalit girl from Barmer’s Trimohi villager to pursue higher education, was found dead in a water tank of the Jain Adarsh Teachers’ Training Institute for Girls in Nokha on March 29.

The Bikaner police had then claimed that Delta had committed suicide by drowning, but no water was found in her lungs. It was suggested that she killed herself after being caught in a compromising situation with the college’s physical education teacher. But it emerged that the hostel warden, Priya Shukla, used to send Delta to the physical education teacher’s room for cleaning, and she had complained about it to her father several times.

The state government had handed over the investigation to the CBI in the sensational case after protests erupted across the state. However, as the CBI did not take up the probe even after two months after the order was issued by the home department Bikaner police filed a charge sheet after 90-day investigation.

The hostel warden and her husband too were charged under section the SC/ST Act and the POCSO Act.