16-yr-old blind girl immolates herself

NEW DELHI: A 16-year-old blind girl allegedly committed suicide by immolating herself after pouring kerosene oil over herself at her Harsh Vihar home in Nand Nagri, located in the north-eastern fringes of Delhi on Saturday.
The girl's relatives remain clueless about why she took such a drastic step.
"We received a call around 11.30 am that Poonam (16), who was blind, had committed suicide by burning herself when she was alone at home," said D C Srivastava, deputy commissioner of police (north-east district)."She had been quite agitated about her blindness, and the treatment was not going on in a proper manner. We suspect she was very depressed about this, and this drove her to kill herself," Srivastava added.
The almost completely burnt body was sent to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital where doctors declared Poonam brought dead.
The post-mortem will be conducted on Sunday. For the moment, police have ruled out any foul play in the death, since there was no sign of anyone present in the house, except for Poonam, at the time she had immolated herself.
"Poonam had lost her eyesight some seven or eight years back," said Kanwar Pal Singh, the bereaved father, who is a teacher at Seemapuri Government Middle School.
"She suffered from an ailment that caused her to slowly lose her vision completely," he added. Poonam's education was discontinued after that, but despite the handicap, she took care of household chores like doing the laundry and knitting winterwear for her two younger sisters.
On Saturday, Singh left for the school around 9 am. His wife Sudesh and their second daughter Ritu (14) took their pet dog to a neighbourhood veterinarian around 11 am, and the youngest sister Neha (12), went to attend tuition classes soon after.
Neighbours said Poonam had locked the front and back doors as well as a collapsible shutter to a vacant shop that the family used as a sitting room.
"Around 11.30 am, we saw smoke emanating from a window-grille," said neighbour Mangal Singh. "We could hear a radio blaring inside," Singh added.
"Some of us broke open the door and went inside, only to find that the house was safe but the girl had immolated herself," said Kali Charan, another neighbour.
"We tried to put out the flames with a blanket, but the girl was already lifeless," added another neighbour Suresh Gautam.
According to Singh, the family was due to visit his parents in Meerut, his hometown, next Saturday for the autumn vacation. "Poonam was very excited about it and we had bought her new clothes, but now she will never wear them," he said with tears trickling down his cheeks.