Nearly a year after the mysterious death of young Business Standard journalist Nirupama Pathak in her Jharkhand home, a local court on Saturday issued arrest warrants against her Delhi-based journalist boyfriend, her father and her brother after the police charged them with abetting her suicide.
The 22-year-old journalist’s puzzling death, originally suspected to be a case of honour killing by her family opposed to her inter-caste marriage plans, was asserted by the police to have been a suicide triggered by pressures both from her family and her boyfriend and former IIMC classmate Priyabhanshu Ranjan. Medical opinion on the causes of her death on April 29, 2010 remains divided with an autopsy in Koderma confirming smothering of a pregnant Nirupama but the AIIMS experts in Delhi questioning those findings.
After the police in Koderma moved the court seeking arrest warrants against five people — Ranjan, her father Dharmendra Pathak, mother Sudha Pathak, brothers Samarendra and Salil — for abetment to Nirupama’s suicide, the CJM’s court on Saturday issued arrest warrants against Ranjan, Dharmendra and Samarendra. An FIR was registered against Ranjan a week after Nirupama’s death under Sections 306 (abetment to suicide), 376 (rape), 520 (criminal intimidation) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC.
Police investigations into the death had at first centred on evidences pointing at possible honour killing and Nirupama’s mother was arrested, interrogated and jailed for a few weeks. Nirupama, a Brahmin by caste, had reportedly angered her parents and brothers when she declared her indissoluble love for Ranjan, who is Kayastha by caste and a resident of Darbhanga in neighbouring Bihar.
While the Pathak family insisted Nirupama committed suicide after exploitation and cheating by Ranjan.