NHRC today issued a show cause notice to Odisha government in connection with the suicide of a class X student and held it responsible for “negligence” in publication of the faulty exam result that showed the girl had failed, prompting her to end life.
National Human Rights Commission has sought Odisha government’s reply as to why the NHRC should not make a recommendation for payment of Rs three lakh monetary relief to the family the girl who committed suicide after seeing the erroneous result of the Board exams about two years ago.
NHRC took cognisance of the matter following a complaint that a girl of Baliabadi village in Khurda could not bear the trauma of her failing her class X board examination and committed suicide on May 1, 2014. However, in the revised result released on May 2, 2014 she was shown as passed.
Justice D Murugesan, NHRC member, in the show cause notice issued to Odisha chief secretary, also set aside the state government’s contention that the student committed suicide as she apprehended poor performance by her, a release issued here said.
He said the girl committed suicide on account of negligence of the officials of the Odisha Board of Secondary Education which had issued a wrong result that was corrected subsequently. “Therefore, the state is vicariously liable,” the notice said adding the state government has been given six weeks to respond.
Pursuant to the directions of the Commission, the state government admitted that the result, published on April 30, 2014, was corrected on May 2, 2014, as there was certain anomaly in the result of third language (Sanskrit/Hindi) for some students.
The publication of result by the Board is a provisional one, subject to modification and revision. The report further said that the first result published by the Board cannot be linked to the death of the student as she scored below average marks in her school examinations and might have been “apprehensive of her educational standard”.
Prasanta Patnaik 
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