Family members of deceased Sushree Mohapatra at Sailashree Vihar in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 2: A Class X girl of DAV Public School at Chandrasekharpur died here yesterday under mysterious circumstances. Sushree Mohapatra, 15, had complained of consuming some medicine in her school in the morning. She was rushed to a private hospital where she died within few minutes.

The school authorities, however, maintained that the girl had not attended school yesterday. The girl’s father today lodged a formal complaint with Chandrasekharpur police demanding proper investigation into the case so that the cause of her death could be ascertained.

Family members of the deceased said that she had gone to the school to attend special classes organised for meritorious students under Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY). “The KVPY classes are held between 6.45 am and 7.55 am. My daughter had gone to attend the class. But, instead of attending her regular classes after the extra class, she came back home,” said Srikant Mohapatra, father of the deceased.

He said his daughter then concentrated on studying at home. After sometime, she laid on bed and complained of having chest pain. “She told her mother that she wanted to vomit but could not. She was having difficulty in breathing. She just wrote on a paper ‘quinine overdose’ that she had consumed in her school. We then rushed her to hospital,” said Srikant, a civil contractor.

The police was informed by the hospital authorities and the body was sent to Capital Hospital for post-mortem. A case of an unnatural death has been registered and the body was handed over to family members after autopsy.

Principal of Chandrasekharpur DAV Public School Keshab Satpathy said the girl had not come to the school yesterday, which was also evident from the attendance register.

“There is not even any record of her leaving the school at an odd time. Our security guards had been told to get signatures of those students going out at unusual hours. But her signature was nowhere to be found there,” said the principal. He also added that it was the responsibility of the police to find out where the girl had gone.

The police said that after preliminary enquiry they found that the girl had mild fever on the previous day.

“She might have taken the medicine on her own. We even checked the school registers and found that she was not in the school during that time. We have seized several documents and are investigating into the matter to find out where she had gone in the morning,” said a police officer.