Kannur: A woman who witnessed her teacher's murder 23 years ago in Panoor here died by suicide on Tuesday.
Shesina (34) of Chekkuttindavida house, Kurara, Panoor had witnessed the murder of her teacher KT Jayakrishnan in 1999.
On December 1, 1999, Shesina was sitting on the first bench of her sixth grade classroom at Mokeri East UP School when assailants entered and hacked to death her teacher Jayakrishnan. He was the state vice-president of the Yuva Morcha.
“Drops of blood had fallen on Shesina’s uniform and books. Tears streaming down her face, she came home running that day. It took her days to leave the house and many more years to leave the haunting memories behind. She never went back to school,” her relatives recounted.
“Though she was admitted to the Rajiv Gandhi Higher Secondary School, Mokeri, she could not continue the studies. She always feared the crowd. She hated news of accidents, could not bear to listen to ambulance sirens, and could not go to temple festival grounds or marriages. Attempts to bring her back to normal life through continued sessions of counselling failed. She passed the SSLC through the private option. After the degree, she took a computer course. For the past three years, she worked as a data entry operator at the village office. Though she was pressured to get married, she did not agree. Shesina used to oppose publishing Jayakrishnan’s photo on social media on his death anniversary. She used to say that she wanted to die. Shesina never came out of the shock of seeing her favourite teacher murdered.
'Her relatives have given a statement that depression took hold of Shesina after the murder and that she had attempted suicide in 2021,' the Panoor police said. The note left behind by Shesina before her death has said that she is ending her life after getting weary of life and that no other person is responsible for it, the police added.
Dr TM Prajith, member of the team that conducted the post mortem examination and Associate Professor in the forensic department at the Kozhikode Medical College, says that the incident left a deep wound in Shesina's life.
“When we came to know that a 34-year-old woman had committed suicide, we enquired about the reason. Initially, the relatives said that the woman had psychological issues. But none of her relatives had any such mental issues. When we enquired further the classroom incident was narrated. Twenty-three years have passed after the incident. She was suffering from the trauma all these years. Usually, those who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder come to the normal mental condition occasionally. But Shesina never came to the normal condition even for a day, we were told,” Dr Prajith said.
“It is a psychological shock caused to a child. It is learnt that half the number of children who were in the class at the time have psychological problems. Many children, who went away from the place, are working in different places. Friends of these students are also facing similar issues. The lives of so many children have been shattered.”
