March 15: The mysterious death of a chartered accountant student has become a rallying point in Kerala after a recent spurt in crimes against women and children.

The body of Mishel Shaji Varghese was found floating in a wharf off Kochi on March 6, a day after the 18-year-old went missing from her hostel in the city. While police have ruled out foul play and signed it off as suicide, the teenager's family, friends and students in general suspect there was more to it and have launched a campaign.

The campaign includes an online petition urging chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan to order a "thorough" investigation, a Twitter hashtag #JusticeForMishel and posts on other social media platforms expressing outrage, besides street demonstrations in various parts of the state. Actors Nivin Pauly, Lalu Alex, Tovino Thomas and Unnikrishnan have weighed in too, demanding justice for the teenager.

The matter was also raised in the Assembly, where the Left government has been facing the heat in recent weeks since the kidnapping and molestation of an actress, and rapes of some inmates at an orphanage.

Last evening, CA students held a demonstration in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, while hundreds gathered in Kochi seeking a high-level probe into the death. "We want to know what happened to her, if it was a suicide what drove her to such an extreme step," Hari Krishnan, one of the main organisers of the protest in Ernakulam, saidtoday.

Mishel had left her hostel on March 5 and headed to a church, St. Antony's Church, in Kochi. The church CCTV footage shows her entering at 5.37pm and leaving at 6.01pm. Nothing was known about her whereabouts after that. Her family filed a missing person complaint the same night and her body was found in the wharf the next day.

Amid the outcry of probe laxity, Cronin Alexander Baby, 26, reported to be a distant relative of the girl and said to be in a relationship with her, was arrested yesterday and booked for abetment of suicide after a friend of Mishel told police she had seen him slap the CA student.

But Mishel's father Shaji Varghese said his family did not know the arrested youth. "We don't know who the man is. We have no relative by that name. My daughter was very cheerful when she called me in the morning (of March 5). There was no sign of any distress when she spoke to my wife later at 3pm," said Shaji, who runs an electrical equipment shop in native village Piravom, 40km from Kochi. Mishel lived in the Kochi hostel to pursue her course.

Chief minister Vijayan has offered to investigate and punish policemen if any laxity was found in the probe. But Varghese dismissed the suicide theory. "My daughter was too strong to commit suicide," he insisted. The post-mortem report puts the cause of death as drowning as there were no injuries on her body but Mishel's family is not prepared to believe she just leapt into the deep waters, that too without leaving any note.

The police claimed Cronin had sent 57 text messages to Mishel on the day she disappeared and another 32 the following day, besidesmaking several calls to her just before she went missing.

The protesters on social media seeking justice for Mishel have drawn a parallel with the April 2016 rape and murder of a law student near Kochi. In sheer brutality, that case had several similarities with the Delhi gang rape and murder of 2012 that shook the nation. Ameer-ul-Islam, a migrant labourer from Assam, was arrested in the law student case.