Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi
Udupi, Oct 19: Fr Mahesh D’Souza, the assistant parish priest of Shirva Church and principal of Don Bosco School breathed his last on Friday, October 11 and his funeral was held on Tuesday October 15. Sadly the death has affected the lives of three innocent youngsters. They have claimed that they are not connected to the death in any way.
Prima facie, the death looked like suicide and the police have said that they will act and take up investigations only after the official post–mortem report is received. So far only the witnesses, who were there in the church premises after the body was found, have been questioned and their statements have been taken.
Fr Mahesh D'Souza
But so many rumours have been spread in the social media regarding this death. One of them is blaming three youngsters for the suicide. The rumours have been doing rounds since a week that these three youngsters picked up a quarrel with Fr Mahesh D’Souza and that ended in his suicide. The photos of these youngsters were also circulated in the social media. Some fake reports in social media even went to the extent of calling these youngsters as murderers.
The fact is, these three youngsters were not involved in any fight with Fr Mahesh D’Souza in the recent past. One of them does not even live in Shirva area now, but works in Gujarat.
The youngsters did their best to defend themselves by saying in the social media that they did not have any fight or argument with Fr Mahesh. But the rumours moved faster than the facts.
They did not have any other platform to narrate their plight. Now the youngsters have moved to the cyber crime wing of the police and lodged a complaint. The police are trying to locate the culprits who started circulating the fake news.
The youngsters and their parents have said that they have suffered mental agony because of the social media propaganda and cannot move in public freely. The future of the youngsters is also in trouble, they complained.
Meanwhile it is learnt that superintendent of police (SP) Nisha James is personally supervising the case and watching the developments and the team of investigators is waiting for the post-mortem report.
One of the victim youngsters told Daijiworld that no innocents should be punished like this without proper evidence. “Circulating our photos in social media has hurt us a lot.” he said.
It is widely believed that the culprits spread the wrong rumours by using the photographs of youngsters to mislead the public.
Prima facie the death of Fr Mahesh D’Souza looks like a case of suicide.
More than 10,000 people had attended the funeral of Fr Mahesh D’Souza.