The river bridge, five cases of suicide, the fear..belief.. and the reality

By Akshaya Kumar Sahoo

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 10: As evening descends on the earth, the bridge over river Salandi at Kuans village near Orissa’s Bhadrak town becomes nightmarish place for the local people to visit.
Five cases of suicide – all by college girls between age 15 and 17 - in the last 10 years, has made the place uncanny and weird. Locals, including the parents of the victims, say the girls - who ended their lives by jumping into the river from above the bridge - were mentally sound and they might have been compelled to end their lives by some unseen force or evil spirit.
Although the local people were reconciling to their normal life after recovering from the shock of last incident that occurred on October 25, 2005, a fresh suicide bid by a higher secondary girl student on Sunday has again brought back shock and fear to them. Unlike the previous incident, this time the girl Kabita Das survived by swimming ashore.
Kabita says she never thought of ending her life. “On Sunday, when I was returning to my college hostel in Bhadrak, I felt somebody was whispering in my ears to come to the bridge. When I got down from the trekker near the bridge, I discovered a white-saree clad girl forcing me to jump into the river. As I resisted, she lifted me on her arms and then threw into the river. However, I was able to swim ashore and thus saved my life,” Kabita was quoted as saying in Pratidin, a local Oriya daily.
On October 25, last year, Pujarani Sriyanka Sahoo, of Bhadrak college student had ended her life in similar fashion. On her way to college hostel in Bhadrak, she stopped near the bridge and ended her life by jumping into the river.
Although her parents then maintained that their daughter was victim of some evil spirit’s motive, very few people believed them, says the paper.
Meanwhile, black-magicians were on Tuesday called in from the Anandpur in Keonjhar district to nab and nullify the evil spirit. Besides, puja and other religious rituals were performed to purify the bridge and its surrounding area.
Psychologists, however, dismiss presence of such evil spirits and say the girls who committed suicide might have suffered from mental disorders.
“It appears that the girls who committed suicides were suffering from schizophrenia. They might have taken the drastic steps under auditory or visual hallucination. In auditory and visual hallucination, schizophrenic patients see and hear commands and end their lives in most violent ways,” said Manoj Sahoo, a a renowned practicing psychiastrist.