Indian Girl Commits Suicide After Teacher Shames Her Menstruation

A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide Sunday in Tirunelveli district in the state of Tamil Nadu after a teacher “tortured” her for seemingly getting a blood stain on her pants during her menstruation, the BBC reported Thursday. A woman’s period is considered to be an offensive subject in India. Traditionally, a woman is considered cursed or “impure” when they are menstruating.

“Amma [mother], please forgive me,” the girl, whose name wasn’t revealed, wrote in her suicide note. “I do not know why my teacher is making complaints against me. I still can't understand why they are harassing and torturing me like this.”

The student was apparently asked to leave her close because of the stain, but the girl didn’t mention the period in her final letter.

Police deemed to the student’s death a suicide and are investigating it.

The girl’s mother lashed out at the teacher, saying her daughter was beaten in for not completing her homework in the past.

“The teacher made my daughter stand outside the class. How can a 12-year-old withstand such humiliation?” the mother, whose name wasn’t revealed either, said in a statement to the BBC.

“My daughter got her period while she was in school last Saturday,” she continued. “When she informed the teacher, she was given a duster cloth to use as a pad.”

The girl committed suicide the following day.

A student commits suicide every hour in India, according to a May report from IndiaSpend. Nearly 9,000 students killed themselves in 2015. From 2010 to 2015, almost 40,000 students committed suicide.

For youths between the ages of 15 to 29, a 2012 report claimed that India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Tamil Nadu, the state where the 12-year-old girl was from, had the second-highest suicide rate. One of the reasons the numbers are so high there could because of the pressures students face by living in a state that has advancing economic growth.

Doing poorly at school might have an extreme effect on a student’s mental health. “The popular perception is that failing exams or inability to cope with academics is the primary reason for student suicides,” Shaibya Saldanha, co-Founder of Enfold India, told IndiaSpend in an email interview. “This is rooted in a sense of helplessness or extreme frustration.”

Awareness about mental health might be one way to combat the high suicide rate among students in India. Additionally, parents should be aware how to handle emotional trauma.

“There should be sexuality and life skills education in schools and colleges,” Saldanha said. “Additionally, since parents play a major role, there should be parenting classes when people get their marriages registered.”

There were 788,000 suicide rates across the globe in 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported. “This indicates an annual global age-standardized suicide rate of 10.7 per 100 000 population,” the WHO writes.

Follow me on Twitter @mariamzzarella