KATHMANDU: Prakriti Lamsal’s funeral was held in her hometown of Siddharthanagar Municipality-8, Rupandehi, after she was found dead in her hostel room at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University in Odisha, India. Her family brought her body back to Nepal the previous night.
Her remains were taken in a procession through Bhairahawa before reaching Swargadwari Ghat for cremation. Several Nepali students from KIIT, especially those from Siddharthanagar, joined the funeral procession. Her grandfather, Devanath Lamsal, performed the final rites.
Lamsal was born in Bhairahawa on June 18, 2004. Students vehemently disagreed with the university administration's assertion that she committed suicide, claiming that the circumstances surrounding her death seemed fishy. Following the administration's use of force against them, their protests grew more intense.
According to preliminary investigations, she allegedly committed suicide as a result of psychological pressure from a senior student in the university's mechanical engineering program. When Advik Srivastava tried to escape the state, authorities detained him at the Bhubaneswar Airport.
Students have been holding silent demonstrations outside the institution in response to the tragedy, calling for justice and an open inquiry. By violently scattering protesters, they have accused the administration of mishandling the issue and attempting to stifle the truth.
A three-person committee has been established by the Odisha government to look into the occurrence. The panel, which is headed by the state's chief secretary (home), consists of secretaries from the departments of women and child development and higher education.
The committee's goals are to ascertain Lamsal's cause of death, look into the university's decision to punish students who were protesting and look into why KIIT did not notify the state government of the occurrence right once.
Following her death and the growing protests, five KIIT University officials were taken into police custody. They were presented in court after their arrest.
Those detained included Shivanananda Mishra (director general of human resources), Pratap Kumar Champati (director of administration), Sudhir Kumar Rath (director of hostels), and two security guards, Ramakant Nayak and Jogendra Behera. However, within hours, the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Court granted them bail upon payment of INR 20,000 each.
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