Journalist Nirupama Pathak, suspected to have been a victim of honour killing, had sent an SMS to her boyfriend Priyabhanshu Ranjan on the day she died that her family members had locked her in a bathroom at their house, the boy’s father claimed on Sunday.
“My son had informed me on the day Nirupama died that he received an SMS from Nirupama that her mother, father and brother have bolted her inside a bathroom at their house,” Ranjan’s father Ramashankar Kanth, who is in Darbhanga, told PTI.
Nirupama’s mother, Subha Pathak, who was arrested last week in connection with the case, was today released on parole for three days to attend the post-death rituals.
Koderma Jail Superintendent Martin Ranjan said that she was allowed to go to her Jhumritilaya home to attend the ’shradh’ rituals following a local court’s permission.
Subha attended the 10th day ceremony which was held amid police presence.
Subha had on Friday petitioned Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) N. K. Agarwal to allow her to attend the ’shradh’ of her daughter.
22-year-old Nirupama Pathak, who was working for a business daily in Delhi, was found dead on April 29 in her parents’ house in Tilaya in Koderma district under mysterious circumstances.
At the behest of Nirupama’s family, a case of rape and abetment to suicide has been filed against Priyabhanshu.
But Mr. Kanth said Nirupama’s family was trying to implicate his son to save their skin.
“My son is innocent. He is in no way involved in the case,” Mr. Kanth, a resident of Kaiderabad Mohalla in Bihar’s Darbhanga town said.
Her mother had alleged that it was a case of suicide.
However, the post-mortem report said Nirupama died due to smothering and that she was pregnant. A 10 to 12 week-old foetus was found during the autopsy.
It has been claimed that Nirupama and her boyfriend Priyabhanshu Ranjan were planning to get married but her parents did not approve of the match because he belonged to a lower caste.
They were batch mates from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi and were all set to get married on March six at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi.
In one of the SMSes made by Nirupama on the fateful day, she told her boyfriend that ‘have patience and that she would try and get back’. She also told him not to take any extreme step.
