The last rites of Walinda Binong were performed at her home village of Marngar, Ri-Bhoi, today, with friends and family bidding the teenager an emotional farewell at the cremation ground.
Walinda was a fashion design student at the School of Design at Mody University. She was reported dead at her college hostel in Sikar town, Rajasthan. The college authorities claimed that she had poisoned and later hanged herself but the family of the victim has denied this. The body reached Marngar yesterday.
The autopsy identified asphyxia due to hanging as the cause of death. However, her father, Rubi Binong, who travelled to Rajasthan after receiving the bad news via a phone call, suspects that jealousy of her seniors could have contributed to his daughter’s death.
According to him, Walinda had been selected to represent Mody University at an event but that did not sit well with her seniors, with her North Eastern ethnicity being an additional factor. She had even received death threats, the father said.
Rubi also wondered how professors who had rung him up knew that she had consumed poison and then hanged herself to death before the autopsy was conducted. A few of Walinda’s friends suspect her boyfriend could have been involved.
