A 16-year-old Dalit student died by suicide after allegedly facing caste-based harassment and bullying over his food habits at a government-aided school in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, with his family accusing school authorities of failing to intervene, Maktoob reported.
The Class 11 student was found dead at his home in Peelamedu on Wednesday. His mother alleged that two classmates repeatedly subjected him to caste-based remarks, taunted him for eating beef and physically assaulted him.
According to the family, the harassment intensified about two months ago after the student disclosed during a classroom discussion that he ate beef.
Police arrested the student's class teacher, P Vijayakumar, on Thursday. The school's headmaster, Arun Kumar, and the two classmates were also named in the case and questioned by police.
According to the mother's complaint, Vijayakumar had asked students to identify themselves for a scholarship programme intended for Scheduled Caste students. The teacher subsequently asked students who ate beef to stand up, prompting the student and several others to do so, she alleged.
The mother claimed that two classmates began targeting her son over his caste and food choices following the incident.
She said her son had complained to both the class teacher and the headmaster, but neither took action against the alleged harassment.
The mother had considered approaching the school herself but decided against it because her son feared that doing so could further isolate him and make him a target, according to the report.
The student had reportedly stayed away from school for several days before returning recently.
On Wednesday morning, he left home around 8am, telling his mother he was going to school. Police believe he later returned home.
His mother, who works as a domestic worker, found him dead when she returned around lunchtime. Police said no suicide note was found.
“He wanted to become an advocate,” his father, who works at a resort in Kerala, told Tamil media, blaming the teacher and school authorities for his son's death and demanding justice.
Relatives and family members gathered outside the Peelamedu police station to protest and demand arrests and a thorough investigation.
Police registered a case under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to abetment of suicide and voluntarily causing hurt, alongside provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Senior police officers and the Child Welfare Committee are examining the circumstances surrounding the death.
The District Educational Officer conducted an inquiry at the school on Thursday. The preliminary inquiry found that two Dalit teachers had voluntarily handled the scholarship enrolment process.
It also noted that the student's mother had visited the school on October 8 to sign his progress report but had not raised a complaint about the alleged harassment at the time.
Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has sought a report from the Coimbatore City Police Commissioner within a week.
Activist Suraj Kumar Bauddh described the student's death as “another institutional killing”.
Shalin Maria Lawrence, a Dalit Christian, Ambedkarite and intersectional feminist activist, alleged that asking students who ate beef to identify themselves in classrooms had become a pattern in rural schools in Tamil Nadu, exposing Dalit children to caste-based bullying.
“The teacher asks for who eats beef in the classroom, the Dalit kids show up and then the other kids bully them to death,” she wrote on X, expressing distress over the alleged role of teachers in caste-based discrimination.