Odisha actor held for abetting colleague's suicide

Pralipta Priyadarshini Samal alias Jessy, a popular TV actor in Odisha, has been arrested by the police on charge of abetting the suicide of her friend and another TV actor, Ranjit Patnaik popularly known as Raja.

She has been booked under Section 306 of the IPC and sent to jail after her bail plea was rejected by a lower court.

On February 7, late in the night, the actors were returning to Bhubaneswar from Balasore district after attending a stage show when Raja asked the driver of the vehicle they were traveling in to stop on the roadside and jumped off a bridge on the national highway. 

He succumbed to injuries while he was being shifted to a hospital.

Before the 38-year-old actor took the extreme step, he had a heated argument with Jessy over certain issues inside the vehicle. According to police, during the verbal fight, Jessy had humiliated and abused Raja which prompted him to stop the vehicle on the pretext of attending nature’s call and jumped off the bridge.

“She provoked Raja to take the extreme step,” said a senior official of Balasore district police who investigated the case.

Pralay Jena, a programme coordinator who was accompanying the actors and the driver of the vehicle Dhaneswar Behera had confirmed during interrogation that they (Raja and Jessy) had a massive fight inside the vehicle. 

Behera had told the police that he had seen Raja jumping off the bridge. Jessy during questioning, however, had denied the suicide angle and said her colleague’s death could be an accident.

Both Raja and Jessy were in a relationship. However, before her arrest, Jessy told the media that she was not in a relationship with Raja. 

“We loved each other very much but were just good friends,” she had told  news channels.