Suresh Jogesh
Delta was a 17 years old Dalit girl from a village near the Pakistan border in Barmer district of Rajasthan. She was persuading her BSTC (after 10+2, to become a school teacher) from Jain Adarsh Teacher Training Institute for girls in Nokha, Bikaner (Rajasthan).
Her prize winning artwork
She was a brilliant student and an amazing painter, having topped in an art competition in whole of Rajasthan when she was in 12th standard. One of her artworks was featured in an art magazine published by the Rajasthan secretariat.
On the morning of March 29, her dead body was found in the water tank of her hostel under suspicious conditions. Police took her body in a municipal garbage carrying vehicle (tractor) without videographing it.
According to the Institution, she committed suicide because they caught her in PT teacher Vijendra Kumar’s room, and they had warned both and asked them to write an apology.
Winning honours at school
Now the question is, why did the Institute not inform her parents?
Why did the Institute not sack the PT teacher and file a complaint against him as she was a minor?
According to the FIR filed by her parents, there were only 4 girls at the hostel as all the other girls had gone home and had not returned by then. She came back along with her father on the morning of 28th. Later in the evening, at 8 pm, she called her father and said that their Warden Priya Shukla had sent her to the PT Instructor’s room, to be his helper, with the excuse of cleaning the hostel. There she was raped by him. She seemed very scared while narrating the incident, according to her parents.
Letter written to the Rajasthan CM by members of the Dalit community and others
When her parents got all the information of this incident, the Institute took written apology from both her and the PT Instructor with a statement that this happened with mutual consent. While her parents say that this is murder, as the institute neither sacked the PT Instructor nor informed them, being ignorant of the fact that she was aminor. According to them, to downplay the incident, the Institute murdered her as they are very influential people.
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Suresh Jogesh is a student at IIT Roorkee and a social activist. He can be reached at sureshjogesh48@gmail.com
