Beed, Apr 8 A 15-year-old girl, who recently took the Class 10 exams, committed suicide in a village in the Beed district of Maharashtra, apparently due to persistent harassment and stalking by a 27-year-old tractor driver, police said on Wednesday.
The girl locked herself in a room and hanged herself from a ceiling hook using a scarf at home in the village under the Kaij tehsil on Tuesday night, they said.
Acting on a complaint filed by the victim's father, police have registered a case against the accused, Akshay Kale, on charges of abetting suicide and stalking under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
According to the complaint, Kale had been stalking the girl for over a year, and her ordeal began when she was in Class 9 at a local school.
The accused, who worked as a tractor driver, and the victim hail from the same village.
In an attempt to protect her from constant harassment, the girl's family moved her to another school for Class 10 studies and put her in a hostel. However, the move failed to deter the accused, who continued to follow and pressure her to speak with him, police said, quoting the complaint.
She returned home after her Class 10 exams were over.
On Tuesday evening, while the girl's parents were working in nearby fields, Kale allegedly entered the family's residential premises and tried to force a conversation with the teenager, according to the police.
Following the incident, witnesses said, the teenager remained under immense mental stress throughout the evening and after dinner she committed suicide.
The FIR noted that the accused had attempted to gift the girl a mobile phone on two separate occasions -- once a year ago and again eight days before her death -- to facilitate chatting. On both occasions, the teenager firmly rejected his gift.
The girl's father had prepared a written complaint addressed to the Inspector of the Kaij police station just five days prior to the suicide, but it was not officially registered.
"If the police had acted on the complaint and taken preventive measures against the accused, our daughter would still be alive today," the girl's grieving parents said.
"A case has been filed based on the father's statement. We are investigating the matter thoroughly," stated Police Sub-Inspector Sukumar Bansode, who is leading the probe in the suicide.