{"id":1007,"date":"2025-07-15T04:24:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T04:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2025-07-15T04:26:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T04:26:35","slug":"20-year-old-odisha-woman-sets-herself-on-fire-why-did-she-take-this-extreme-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2025\/07\/15\/20-year-old-odisha-woman-sets-herself-on-fire-why-did-she-take-this-extreme-step\/","title":{"rendered":"20-Year-Old Odisha Woman Sets Herself on Fire, why did she take this extreme step?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Quick Adsense WordPress Plugin: http:\/\/quickadsense.com\/ -->\n<div class=\"9fece8afa224fd09e54b043d0febfb58\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- NR ATF -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8898941184964366\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4839033563\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>In a shocking incident that has come to light, has taken the country by numbness. A young twenty-year college student set herself on fire on Saturday. This second-year Integrated B.Ed. student of Fakir Mohan (Autonomous) College tragically passed away on Monday, July 14 after setting herself on fire, over alleged sexual harassment by her college\u2019s professor.<\/p>\n<p>Located in Balasore in Odisha, she took an extreme step and set herself ablaze, protesting official inaction on the allegations she had put forth for sexual harassment by the professor in her college. This development has indeed thrown light on the adversity and plight of vibrant and bright university aged women, who are not safe even in their own temples of learning \u2013 as the number of cases dealing with assault, harassment, rape and misconduct in educational institutions has been on a continual rise in recent times.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday evening, President Droupadi Murmu had visited the victim in the burns ward at AIIMS Bhubaneswar and met the parents of the girl, assuring all necessary help in her treatment.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2025\/07\/01\/india-to-receive-above-normal-rain-in-july-as-per-imd-prediction-orange-alert-in-states\/\">Odisha<\/a> Governor Hari Babu Kambhampati, who was also present during the President&#8217;s visit, asked the state government to act with urgency, empathy and a sense of responsibility to prevent such incidents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why did she take this extreme step?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The young student set herself afire on Saturday just outside the chamber of the college principal, after the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of her institution gave a clean chit to the head of the education department, Samir Kumar Sahu, in the sexual <a href=\"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2025\/06\/19\/cyber-fraud-takes-a-new-form-mumbai-woman-loses-22-lakhs\/\">harassment<\/a> charges raised by her a fortnight ago. The girl&#8217;s father had informed the authorities that his daughter was being harassed by Sahu for the past six months, on account of her low attendance.<\/p>\n<p>In her complaint, the girl accused Sahu of making sexual advances against her and then threatening to fail her in examinations if she did not give in to her demands. The girl, an active member of RSS-controlled Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, had apprised CM Majhi, union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, national commission for women as well as district police officials about her plight.<\/p>\n<p>The victim&#8217;s father, who works as a clerk in a local college, stated his daughter wanted him to lodge an FIR with local police last week as she did not trust the inquiry process of the college authorities into her sexual harassment allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Post her unfortunate demise, the Odisha police arrested the principal of Fakir Mohan Autonomous College, Dilip Ghosh and took him into custody for investigation. He was suspended amid reports that of shielding the accused Sahu from the sexual harassment charges, and even went to the extent of threatening the 20-year-old victim with rustication, if she did try taking further action. Sahu was arrested by the police soon after the girl immolated herself. When the victim approached Sahu for correcting her attendance, the professor asked her for sexual favours and as a result she had attempted twice earlier also to end her life over the serial harassment\u00a0being faced.<\/p>\n<p>It is appalling to say the least, with the female gender being compelled to resort to such extreme steps as a result of non-cooperation and inaction by the management of academic institutions.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a shocking incident that has come to light, has taken the country by numbness. A young twenty-year college student set herself on fire on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[379,378,380,377],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-college","tag-droupadi-murmu","tag-harassment","tag-odisha","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}