FIR in JNU suicide case, SC/ST Act invoked

Police have registered a case of abetment to suicide, setting in motion an investigation into the death of Jawaharlal Nehru University research scholar J Muthu Krishnan, a Dalit.
There was uproar in both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday over the suicide.

The FIR was registered after Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is a JNU alumnus, “instructed” Delhi Police.

Police have also invoked provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, lodging the FIR on a complaint by Muthu Kumar’s father Jeevanandhaam M.

In Rajya Sabha, Sitharaman admitted that the FIR over the suicide had not been filed earlier.

But the government had asked Delhi Police to do so, she informed.

The minister met the victim’s family members, visiting the mortuary at All India Institute of Medical Sciences where an autopsy was conducted by a five-member panel of doctors. They reportedly found that the student had died of asphyxia due to hanging.

Union Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan and other AIADMK leaders also gathered at the AIIMS mortuary, waiting to take Muthu’s body to Chennai by a  flight later in the evening.

The 28-year-old first-year MPhil student was found hanging from the ceiling fan at a friend’s home near the varsity campus in Munirka Vihar on Monday.

Communist Party of India’s D Raja first raised the issue in Rajya Sabha, alleging that Muthu Krishnan had died in “mysterious circumstances”.

Tiruchi Siva and Kanimozhi of DMK, Ram Gopal Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Ali Anwar Ansari of Janata Dal (United) too raised the issue in the House.