Chennai: 4 girls end lives by jumping into well after teacher scolds them'

Chennai: Four girls, all aged 16, committed suicide by jumping into an 80-ft farm well at Ramapuram near Arakkonam in Vellore district on Friday. Students of the government girls' higher secondary school at Panapakkam, were allegedly upset after their teachers scolded them for scoring poor marks in the tests.
While the bodies of three girls were retrieved from the well after much effort by the state fire and rescue services and the national disaster response force (NDRF), the fourth girl remains missing, police said.

They said preliminary investigation revealed that the girls, all classmates and close friends, took the extreme step after their class teacher asked them to bring their parents to discuss their poor performance in the tests. Police said the girls gave the afternoon session a miss, leaving their school bags in the class. After word spread about the missing girls, a local spotted their cycles near the well in the farm belonging to one Venkatesan, a few kilometres from the school.

The police was alerted and a team rushed there. As the well was very deep, it was difficult to reach the bodies and after much difficulty, three were lifted up by ropes. The bodies were removed to the government hospital for autopsy while search continued late into night for the fourth missing girl. Vellore superintendent of police P. Pakalavan and other senior police officers along with revenue personnel oversaw the rescue operations. Police sources said that rescue operations would continue late into the night. A case has been registered and the school HM and teachers were quizzed till late night by the police.