Mystery shrouds 15-year-old’s death

Mystery shrouds the death of 15-year-old Yashwanth Sai K P, whose body was found floating at Guruvayanakere lake in Belthangady on Thursday morning. The police have not been been able to ascertain the reason behind the boy’s death even after inquiring with his parents, relatives, friends and school authorities.

Sai’s body was found in the lake on Thursday. His school bag was found on the banks of the lake on Monday, following which the fire service personnel had carried out a search operation in the lake.

Dakshina Kannada superintendent of police Ravikanthe Gowda said there were no injuries of any sort on the boy’s body.

Sai’s aunt Suvarna told DH, “My father or brother used to drop Sai regularly at the Hoodi bus stop from where he used to go to school. On Tuesday morning too, my father dropped him at the bus stop but he did not return after school hours.”

Since age one, Sai used to stay with his grandfather Thyagaraj Shetty, grandmother Radhamma and his uncle and aunt Ravi Kumar and Suvarna respectively. They were residents of Muniswamy Shetty Layout in Hoodi.

Sai’s parents Prem Kumar and mother Varalakshmi stayed at their native place in Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh.

On the day he went missing, around 6.30 pm, Thyagaraj Shetty and Ravi Kumar called up Sai’s teacher in Gandhinagar and learnt that he had not come to school. They then went to two of his teachers’ houses to inquire, but they too said Sai had not attended school.

The family searched for him the entire night and lodged a missing complaint with the Mahadevapura police on Wednesday.

The same day, Belthangady police contacted the family and informed about Sai’s bag and shoes found at the bank of Guruvayanakere lake. Fire and emergency services who conducted a search operation, could not trace him and aborted their search as it was dark.

On Thursday morning, his body came afloat and the police retrieved his old ID card which was when he was in Class IX, Aadhaar card, and the bus tickets from his trouser pockets.

Sai’s post-mortem was conducted at the Belthangady government hospital on Thursday and was handed over to his family members. His body was brought to the city and was cremated at Ayyappa Garden near Hoodi, a family member said.

Preliminary inquiries by the police with his grandfather and uncle revealed Sai was poor in studies and had scored low marks in Class X tests. The family suspect that though he may have been dejected, it wouldn’t have led him to take the extreme step.

Meanwhile, school authorities said he was a normal student. His friends had no idea about him leaving the city or about him being depressed over any issue, Suvarna told DH.

Family refutes Blue Whale theory

“After we got the message about his school bag and shoes, we checked his room thoroughly but we could not find anything unusual except his books,” said Suvarna. “We won’t even let him go to a cyber cafe for his projects as we knew he could get attracted to harmful things on the Internet including the Blue Whale game.

We have a SIM card for him which he uses it whenever he needs to access the internet and we would get him his printouts for projects,” said Suvarna, who remembers him telling her, “Why do people get attracted to such bad games such as Blue Whale,” when the media was covedring on such stories.

The boy’s father also said Yashwanth was poor in studies.