Overview
- A 20–21-year-old BCA student was found hanging in her college hostel room and was declared dead at MKCG Medical College after she was taken there on Saturday.
- Police registered an FIR at Golanthara police station under Section 108 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and arrested 24-year-old Biswajit Jena, who is the nephew of Transport Minister Bibhuti Bhusan Jena.
- Investigators have seized the deceased’s and the accused’s electronic devices, collected CCTV from the hostel and questioned the girl’s sister, roommates, friends and other acquaintances as part of preliminary forensic work.
- The student’s family alleges she was in a relationship with the arrested man and say the death was staged as murder, but police say the probe is at an early stage and the postmortem and technical reports are awaited.
- The case has drawn political attention in Odisha with calls for an impartial inquiry, and Section 108 means courts will need evidence of harassment, coercion or instigation to prove criminal liability rather than treating the death as automatically a homicide.