Moments of humiliation before Aritry’s death

Aritry Adhikary, a ninth-grade Viqarunnisa student, knelt down before the school principal and begged for forgiveness by touching her feet, before she killed herself in humiliation in the hands of her teachers.

Moments of insults appeared in the details filed by her father with the police on Tuesday night.

The one-page first information report, or FIR, narrates the events leading to her death that sparked fury on the social media and protests on the streets in front of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, a top school in Bangladesh.

The suicide exposed the school’s controversial handling of students and teachers’ behaviour with their parents and guardians when anything goes wrong.

Aritry’s father Dilip Adhikary blamed three teachers -- Hasna Hena, Zinat Akhtar and Nazneen Ferdous of Viqarunnisa -- for their roles in the suicide.

On Dec 3, Aritry went to her school with a cellphone. An invigilator, Afsana, seized her phone and told her guardians to come to the school the next day.

“We first went to class teacher Hasna Hena. She kept us waiting for a long time and then took us to assistant head teacher Zinat Akhtar,” Dilip said in the case.

“Hasna Hena became very agitated upon seeing us and told us that Aritry will be given a TC. Understanding her mood, we asked for her forgiveness. But she told us that she cannot do anything.”

“Then we went to meet the school principal, Nazneen Ferdous. My daughter immediately touched her feet and begged her forgiveness. We also asked for her forgiveness thinking about our daughter’s uncertain future. Then we all started crying,” Dilip said. 

“But our efforts failed to soften her stance on the matter.”

“After some time we noticed that Aritry was not in the room with us. We thought she was outside and started searching. But we could not find her anywhere and we headed home. After coming back to our house, we found her in her room. We then went back into our own room.”

Dilip said he left for work after a little while. “After some time my wife Beauty Rani Adhikari called me on my mobile phone and told me that Aritry’s room was locked. She was not answering the door and my wife asked me for advice.”

“I then told her to contact the caretaker downstairs. Later my wife called the caretaker Sukhdev to our house. He entered Aritry’s room through the bathroom ventilator."

The caretaker discovered Aritry’s body hanging from the ceiling fan, with a scarf around her neck.

The family immediately took Aritry to Islami Bank Hospital in Kakrail around 3pm. But the on-duty doctors referred the family to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

“We hurriedly started towards Dhaka Medical in an ambulance. After tests, a doctor declared her dead.”      

In the aftermath of the incident, the government scrapped “monthly pay order” benefits for three Viqarunnisa teachers, including Principal Nazneen Ferdous, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said on Wednesday.

Nahid briefed the media on the findings filed by a government-formed panel that investigated the events leading to the suicide of Aritry.

Nahid announced the panel’s recommendations to suspend those teachers and take departmental and legal action against them.

The committee found “elements of instigation” in the suicide of the student.

Earlier in the day, a group of students gathered outside the Viqarunnisa School, demanding justice. They vowed to continue their movement to pile pressure on the school authorities to suspend the “rogue” teachers.