PU gives clean chit to teacher blamed for suicide by student

Even as the police sit on the case, about a month on, a Panjab University panel formed to look into the suicide of a dental sciences student has given the clean chit to an associate professor who was reportedly blamed in the suicide note.

Ankrita Tripathi, a second-year student of Dr Harvansh Singh Judge Institute of Dental Sciences, PU, had hanged herself on November 28 at her house in Sector 32.

In the suicide note found from her room, she had said she had failed to fulfill her parents' dreams and held Savita Parashar, associate professor of biochemistry, responsible for her taking the extreme step.

She had failed the biochemistry exam.

The police had booked the teacher for abetment to suicide; but Sector-34 station house officer Rajesh Shukla said on Tuesday, "We have not reached any conclusion so far, and investigations are on."

However, PU's five-member fact-finding panel headed by professor Bhupinder Singh Bhoop - constituted five days after the incident as protests raged on campus -has found no mala fide intentions on the teacher's part, it is learnt.

"In the practical exams and internal assessments, she always passed. She only failed in theory papers," a top official said. The fact-finding committee scanned records pertaining to the students who had failed since 2011, and found that most who failed at some point had later cleared their exams. In her case, she got admitted in 2011 but did not appear in exams in April 2012 and September 2012.

"She appeared in four subjects in the exams held in April this year, and cleared three but failed in biochemistry. And in biochemistry too, she had failed in the theory exam, not in the practical and internal assessments," the official added.

She re-appeared in September 2013, and the result was declared in November following which she committed suicide. "In this examination, too, she had cleared the practical exam and internal assessments. But she failed in the theory papers, internal as well as external," the official said.

Though the internal theory paper is checked at the institute itself by the same teacher, the official claimed that since the papers were coded it was "very difficult to establish the identity of the student".

The report is likely to be submitted before the PU syndicate in a meeting scheduled for the first week of January.