2 ABVP members arrested for abetting Odisha suicide
Debabrata Mohanty, Bhubaneswar
Printed on: Aug 05, 2025 04:02 am IST
Two ABVP members had been arrested for abetting suicide after a girl set herself on hearth over alleged sexual harassment by a professor in Odisha.
Two members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the scholar wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had been arrested on Monday on costs of abetment of suicide in reference to the demise of a girl who set herself on hearth over alleged sexual harassment, police mentioned.
The 20-year-old lady, a second-year scholar on the Fakir Mohan (Autonomous) School in Balasore, Odisha, set herself on July 12, accusing assistant professor Samir Kumar Sahoo, who headed the schooling division, of sexually harassing her. The lady died of her accidents on July 14.
On Monday, police arrested Subhra Sambit Nayak (ABVP Odisha joint secretary) and Jyotirprakash Biswal (ABVP member and third-year scholar) for allegedly instigating the girl to take the acute step and for filming the self-immolation. Biswal reportedly sustained 15% burn accidents on his face and arms after trying to douse the hearth.
“The 2 have been arrested as we discovered their involvement in instigating the girl in taking the acute step,” a senior police officer of the state Prison Investigation Division (CID) mentioned on anonymity. Biswal was interrogated to reconstruct the occasions resulting in the incident, officers mentioned.
Police mentioned Nayak and Biswal had been arrested beneath sections 108 (abetment of suicide) and 61(2)(prison conspiracy) of BNS. The accused had been later produced in court docket and remanded to 14-day judicial custody.
ABVP, in a press launch, condemned the arrests and raised issues over the “behaviour” of Odisha Police.
“The police took no motion towards the leaders of scholar organisations affiliated with the Congress and the BJD, who tried to weaken the sufferer’s struggle towards sexual harassment by assassinating her character and mentally torturing her. Quite the opposite, the ABVP activists who tried to save lots of her — a few of whom even sustained burn accidents and had been solely just lately discharged from the hospital — had been those arrested. This strategy not solely reveals the failure of the Odisha Police but additionally exposes their biased perspective,” the organisation mentioned.
