Neha Sawant

Mumbai, Jan. 4: An 11-year-old schoolgirl hanged herself at home on Saturday, but police played down allegations that her parents’ ban on her participation in reality TV shows was the motive.

Neha Sawant’s parents, worried about her studies, had also stopped her dance lessons and stage performances, but an officer said all this had happened too long ago to have provoked the suicide now.

Some child rights activists had been quick to link the tragedy to the pressure reality shows put children under by igniting their ambitions and subjecting them to intense competition.

“Neha last appeared on TV in January 2009 when she auditioned for Boogie Woogie, but her dance group was rejected. She did one more stage show in March, after which her parents stopped her from performing. I don’t understand why she would kill herself a year after that,” said investigating officer S. Divekar.

“The parents initially said she might have killed herself because they had barred her from dance performances, but later said she was not well and was going through puberty issues, etc.”

Neha had hanged herself from a ceiling fan after her parents had left for work. Neha’s mother is a schoolteacher and her father works for an audit firm.

Her one-time dance teacher Shyam Patil said Neha’s parents, though strict, were not repressive. “Neha was in Class V and they were concerned that rigorous dance training and regular performances would take her focus away from studies. She was a sweet-tempered, obedient child and seemed to have accepted their decision.”

Child rights activist Vanita Markandaya, though, blamed reality TV for the suicide. She said that parents, “prodded by the prospect of money, fame and future opportunities for their talented kids, often are silent accomplices”.

“Some are extra-pushy and drive their children too hard — others, after some experimentation, suddenly withdraw their children because of their conservative outlook. Nobody bothers to find out what the child wants. This leads to depression in the children, which may result in suicide,” she said.

A Zee TV official denied the allegation. “Since Indian television was born with DD, talent hunts involving children have been taking place and nobody has blamed those shows for the rise in children’s suicides,” he said.

Two other student suicides, however, prompted mental health experts to call for greater efforts to prevent what they felt was becoming a public health issue in the city.

Class VII student Sushant Patil, who had failed in four subjects, was found hanging in the toilet of Shardashram Vidya Mandir this morning. Medical student Bhajanpreet Kaur Bhullar, 20, who had failed in a couple of subjects in a semester, had hanged herself at home on Saturday.