The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Mystery shrouds student’s death

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Tuesday, Jul 22, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Mystery shrouds student’s death

Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD: Mystery shrouded the death of a tenth standard student, M. Babu, 16, who died of burns at Muneerabad village of Medchal on city outskirts on Monday.

The Medchal police Inspector Syed Rafeeq told reporters that villagers saw the boy, engulfed in flames, coming out of the local school building under construction around 5.30 a.m.

“None knew what had happened earlier. The boy collapsed on the ground before the building and was shifted to the Gandhi hospital,” the Inspector explained.

Initially, the villagers thought Babu committed suicide.

But some sentences written by anonymous persons on the blackboard in a classroom of the present school building raised suspicions of foul play behind the boy’s death. The writing stated that Babu was being burnt to death so that the building under construction should not be used to run school.

“We compared Babu’s notebooks and the letters on the blackboard were similar to his writing,” the Inspector remarked. Photographs of the blackboard writing and the student’s notebooks were sent to the forensic science laboratory for analysis.

A matchstick and a melted plastic bottle, in which police believe the boy had carried kerosene, were recovered from the spot where the body was found. The melted bottle too was sent for examination by the experts.

Babu was the adopted son of Achaiah, 70, a sweeper working in a local temple. Achaiah had no children and adopted Babu 11 years ago. His wife died few years ago.

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Andhra Pradesh