(Online Desk)

Fourteen-year-old Sai Deepthi, who ended her life here on Thursday after she was allegedly not allowed to write unit test as she had failed to pay the exam fee of Rs 2,000 at Jyothi High School in Malkajgiri, where she was studying, was known to be a sensitive child.  

And Thursday’s incident was not the first time she was publicly humiliated in the school for non-payment of fee. What could have probably triggered her decision to end her life was the reported casteist slurs made on her. 

The Malkajgiri police on Thursday night booked the school management under the SC/ST (Prevention of atrocities) Act and also under Sec 305 of the IPC, for abetment of suicide. The school correspondent, a teacher and a clerk, who also allegedly passed casteist remarks on the girl for not paying fees, have been taken into custody. Her body was taken to her grandmother’s house at Tukaram Gate, a few km away from her home.  

Outside the gate where the body was placed, the girl’s mother, Sunitha, her elder sister Sai Latha and father  KS Balakrishna, had to deal with not just the grief of losing their daughter but also the protestors who stalled the funeral. 

A grief-stricken Balakrishna said, “Ee paristhiti ee talli tandrulaki rakudadu  (No parent should live to see this day).”  He was at a loss for words. A painter by profession, he was always busy to find work on a daily basis.

“Now and then, my child would come and say that the due date for payment of fee was over.  This happened on several occasions in the past. We would pay late fee and then she would go back to school,” recalled the father.