Two days after Aurora College principal P. Ravi’s body was found in Tank Bund, the question among shocked students and colleagues back in his college is: was it suicide, as the police suspect, or murder?
His colleagues on Tuesday said that Mr Ravi didn’t seem worried or under any pressure when they last saw him on Friday. According to the police, Mr Ravi left home late on Friday night and went to Necklace Road in an auto-rickshaw. He was missing since then, before the police fished out his body on Sunday morning.
On Tuesday, students said they aren’t convinced Mr Ravi committed suicide. Calling the circumstances surrounding his death “mysterious”, they urged for further probe. Suraj Shewarnani, a third-year B.Com student, said his first reaction to the news was that Mr Ravi was killed. “As a class representative, I was in regular touch with the principal. He was a man full of energy and encouraged students to look beyond books,” Mr Shewarnani said. “He had even chalked out activities for the coming year. He was a determined person; not one who would commit suicide.”
Equally baffled with the news, Kameshwar Rao, a lecturer in the college, wo-ndered, “Why would anyone want to murder him? He was the kind of man who won over even enemies with his dynamism. He certainly wasn’t a man who would give up on life — in fact he would constantly counsel students aganst taking any rash and impulsive decision.” On Friday, Mr Rao said, the principal did not come across as depressed or tense.
Some of Mr Ravi’s former students are equally bewildered. The postmortem is being conducted at Gandhi Medical Hospital and the report is due on Friday.