Courting controversy, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MLA was seen welcoming Sagaya Mary, the hostel warden who was named as the main accused in the suicide of the 17-year-old girl in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur, as she was stepping out of prison.
A photo, which was posted on social media by Tiruchirappalli (East) MLA Inigo Iruthayaraj, shows him wrapping a shawl around Mary outside the Tiruchirapalli Central Prison after she was granted bail by a Thanjavur court.
Iruthayaraj mentioned in his Facebook post that Mary had worked for the education of poor children from rural areas. "Justice will prevail. We will continue to work for religious harmony," the post read.
The Class 12 girl student of Thanjavur died by suicide on 19 January as she was allegedly under pressure to convert to Christianity, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) state unit and her parents had alleged.
The BJP's allegation was based on a video, in which the 17-year-old was heard accusing the hostel warden of scolding her, forcing her to clean rooms in the hostel, and asking her parents to allow her to convert.
Three days before her demise, she had recorded a statement before the magistrate and had named Mary as the person who had extorted physical and mental labour from her, forcing her to take this extreme step.
In the written complaint, she had accused Mary of forcing her to do the chores and the accounts for the hostel and mistreating her regularly. She had alleged that she was verbally abused if she made any mistake and was made to accompany the warden to Trichy. This, she said, distracted her from her studies.
Sagaya Mary was then arrested and remanded to judicial custody.
This comes on the same day that the Supreme Court allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the suicide of the 17-year-old girl.
The Tamil Nadu government on 3 February had moved the apex court challenging the Madras HC's (Madurai Bench) order directing a CBI probe into her death amid allegations of conversion.
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