SC Refuses to Stay CBI Probe into Thanjavur Student Suicide of 17-year-old in Tamil Nadu

In what is seen as a setback to the ruling DMK government in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court today refused to interfere in the transfer of the probe into suicide of a 12th grader in central Tamil Nadu to the CBI. The death of the girl and a subsequent video of her released sparked debate about forced religious conversion in the state.

The Tamil Nadu Government had appealed against the order of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, which ordered the state police to hand over the case to the central investigator. The lower court found credence in the arguments of the girl’s parents that the state police was proceeding with the investigation in a biased manner.

Earlier, conflicting details of the events that led up to the death of the girl were leaked to the press, with the state BJP in Tamil Nadu leading the charge of forced conversion. State BJP President K Annamalai Tweeted an edited video of the girl, in which she alleged that the hostel authorities of the school where she stayed at had spoken to her parents about converting her to Christianity.

After the charge of forced conversion gathered momentum, counter narratives about step-motherly treatment to the child from her parents’ end were developed as a way to neutralize the conversion angle built by the BJP and its associated organizations. Also taking into account the fact that the man who shot the video of the girl belonged to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Ariyalur district, the Madurai Bench found cause in the parents’ argument that the case needed to be probed by the CBI.

According to sources present at the hearing at the Supreme Court today, the Tamil Nadu government, represented by Senior counsels Mukul Rohatgi and P Wilson, laid out a list of reasons as to why the transfer was not “fair and reasonable.”

After hearing out the arguments, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Bela Trivedi, ordered that the CBI investigation should continue, but ordered that notice with regard to a plea in the Special Leave Petition on expunging certain remarks in the order of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court.

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