Since the suicide of Srimathi, a wave of violent protests hit the state of Tamil Nadu demanding justice for her, this also lead to a phenomenon called as Copycat Suicide.
Srimathi and her mother.
Credits:- Youtube
But a very worrying trend has also emerged after this suicide.
Police reports suggest that 5 suicides have been reported to them within this fortnight, including two in the past 24 hours, police said on Wednesday.
Police also mentioned that all the students that died belonged to either the lower or the Lower middle class.
The first of these five cases was a class 12th boy found dead in his home at Karaikudi in the Sivagangai district on Tuesday night by his parents.
“There is a suicide note which clearly says that he did not like the Biology-Maths group. His parents are blaming themselves because they wanted him to take the group,” the police say.
The boy studied in a private school and his parents belonged to the middle class, they had a lot of academic aspirations for him and made him join this group.
A post-mortem was completed on Wednesday and the parents took his body home.
The next suicide happened on the same day (Tuesday).
This time a girl from class 11th was found dead in her house.
Her parents work in a fireworks factory in Sivakasi and found her dead when they returned home.
Her parents told Virudhnagar SP M Manohar that “She suffered severe menstrual pain which may have led her to take the extreme steep.”
Police are not completely sure about this.
Thus a case of unnatural death has been registered and the body was sent for autopsy to ascertain the cause of death.
An investigation into the circumstances of her death is underway.
Again on Tuesday in the Sivakasi district, a class 12 girl committed suicide at her home in Cuddalore.
The cause of death is said to be academic stress due to her monthly tests underway at school and had fought with her mother over her studies.
On Monday, a class 12 girl was found dead inside her hostel attached to a government-aided school in the Thiruvallur district.
No reason has been ascertained in her case as yet.
Police said they were investigating the reason for the child’s death.
After the Kallakurichi girl’s death case, the Madras high court ordered on July 18 that every suicide of a student inside an educational institution must be handed over to the CB-CID.
So the cases of the Thiruvallur and Kallakurichi students’ death are being probed by the agency.
Thus all the above cases have been handed over to the investigative agencies and an investigation is going on.
These suicides also point out to dangerous trend of Copycat suicides.
Copycat suicides happen when a person identifies with a person who has died.
Due to the sensationalisation of the Kallakurichi girl’s death case by the media has caused this phenomenon in Tamil Nadu, this is also known as the “Werther phenomenon,” says Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar, consultant psychiatrist and founder of the country’s premier suicide prevention organisation SNEHA.
According to the police, copycat suicides go up by 15% after a sensational reporting of suicide
This string of suicides is a small slice of the overall number.
These suicides make us question the education system.
We need to have a more inclusive and student-friendly education system, the government should invest in a psychologist/Counsellor to create safe spaces in the school.
Structural changes are needed in the schooling system and these changes should be decentralised in nature.
Credits:- Hindustan Times.
Featured Image Credits:- Youtube
