Kunduli girl’s suicide causes embarrassment to Odisha government

BHUBANESWAR: The suicide of a girl from Kunduli in Odisha’s Koraput district, three months after she accused “men in uniform” of raping her, has turned into an embarrassment for the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha.

The state administration is at the receiving end of criticism from across quarters for what is alleged as its failure to address this issue with sensitivity. Opposition parties have called for a 12-hour 'bandh' on Wednesday in protest, even as chief minister Patnaik ordered a judicial probe into the incident.

On Tuesday, a day after the 14-year-old committed suicide, her family, accompanied by Congress workers, carried her body out onto the streets of Kunduli in protest, refusing to allow an autopsy. Locals burned tyres and blocked traffic on National Highway 26. In the state capital of Bhubaneswar, BJP workers clashed with police during a protest march.


The Class 9 student hanged herself, after months of what even some politicians of the ruling Biju Janata Dal acknowledge must have been a harrowing time for her.

In October last year, the girl claimed that she had been gang raped by “men in uniform” while she was returning from school. A month later, after several tests and interrogations, government doctors and the police claimed that she was not raped.

The girl had already once attempted suicide even as she was being treated in a government hospital after the October incident. The girl had claimed that she had been offered a bribe to change her statement by senior police officers, an accusation that the police refuted.

The girl’s mother has now accused the state police of conspiring to save the unidentified men of the commando battalion fighting left-wing extremists in the southern Odisha district.