The family of Salin Pokhrel, the 14-year-old girl who was found hanging in a school hostel at Ratnanagar Municipality-10 on February 24, has demanded a fair and detailed investigation into the case. The bereaved family members suspect that Salin might have been murdered after rape.

The District Police Office in Chitwan was informed at around 10 am on February 24 that the victim was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her dormitory in the hostel of Ekata Shishu Niketan, a private school. The victim, an eighth grader, had been staying in the hostel for the past two years.

The incident has drawn wider attention after the girl’s family said that the victim might have been raped and subsequently murdered.

According to Deputy Superintendent of Police Shriram Bhandari, also the spokesperson for Chitwan police, investigating officers have already started their study of the incident. In a statement on Saturday, the district police office expressed its commitment to undertaking a detailed scientific investigation.

Bhandari said that a team led by a senior officer was immediately deployed to the incident site for investigation. “The body was found hanging from the ceiling fan in the hostel room,” Bhandari said. “We recovered a suicide note and seized cell phones of possible suspects.”

Bhandari added that five girls lived together in the hostel room where the victim was found hanging. The officers have interrogated four other girls over the incident.

“The victim, according to her friends, was washing clothes during the meal time, telling her friend that she would come for the food later,” Bhandari said. “We also watched CCTV footage, which shows that the girls could not open the door to the hostel room when they returned from the dining room. A teacher came later and forced open the door. Then the school informed police about the incident.”

According to him, the victim addressed her father and mother in the recovered note and said “sorry”.

The family members are not very convinced about the police’s investigation. They have refused to cremate the body until there was a detailed investigation into the case. “Based on the information we received, the incident is quite suspicious,” said Lalit Pokhrel, the victim’s father. “We suspect that she was hanged to death after rape.”

The victim’s family says that police delayed the investigation and refused to register a complaint naming the suspects. “The police were reluctant to detain the suspects after the incident,” Lalit said. “Considering that we cannot get justice, we refused to carry out an autopsy in Bharatpur. We brought the body to the TU Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for the postmortem on Wednesday.”

Chitwan police said they have not yet received the postmortem report.

Police arrested the school principal Balhari Devkota, vice-principal Kamal Sharma Paudel and hostel in-charge Kiran Bahadur Adhikari on Tuesday. The Chitwan district court has remanded them in custody for seven days for investigation.

According to the school administration, five girls and 26 boys had been staying in the hostel in separate dormitories separated by an iron channel gate.

The victim originally hailed from Gorkha. She was under the guardianship of her mother after her parents got divorced when she was just three-and-a-half years old. Her mother, who worked in Dubai, has returned after the incident. Her father has been staying in Kathmandu.

The school has remained closed after the incident. The school administration decided to run classes from grades 8 to 12 from Friday but other classes are yet to resume. “There are various versions of the incident,” said Mohan Pandey, a member of the Teacher-Guardian Association at the school. “The incident should be probed fairly. This issue should be resolved as soon as possible by bringing out facts.”

Meanwhile, the two largest parties in the House of Representatives have expressed their concerns about the incident. Issuing a statement on Saturday, the ruling Nepali Congress has called for a fair probe into the incident.

Amid suspected murder, the circumstances leading to the incident demand a serious probe, the largest party said.

CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, the leader of the opposition, wrote on his Facebook that the incident demands an in-depth investigation. “Let’s find the facts and make it clear whether the incident is a suicide or a murder, by conducting an in-depth and credible investigation,” he demanded.